EDITOR'S LETTER
C H A N N E L M AG A Z I N E I N D I A Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie Group Chief Executive Officer Ashish Bagga Group Synergy and Creative Officer Kalli Purie
OH, TO BE AN ASTRONAUT!
Editorial Director Jamal Shaikh Art Director Piyush Garg Asst Art Director Rahul Sharma Designer Kishore Rawat
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Group Business Head Manoj Sharma Associate Publisher (Impact) Anil Fernandes Senior General Managers Kaustav Chatterjee (East), Jitendra Lad (West), Head (North) Subhashis Roy General Manager Shailender Nehru (Bangalore), General Manager Velu Balasubramaniam (Chennai)
Business
Head, CRM/CMS & Senior GM Vikas Malhotra Chief Manager, Operations GL Ravik Kumar Marketing Managers Kunal Bag, Anuradha Rana Production Anuj Jamdegni
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Chief General Manager DVS Rama Rao General Manager - National Deepak Bhatt Sr Manager - North Manish Shrivastava Sr Manager - East Joydeep Roy General Manager - West Rajesh Menon General Manager - Operations Rakesh Sharma
DISCOVERY NETWORKS ASIA-PACIFIC Editorial Board
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Discovery Channel Magazine reserves all rights throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner, in whole or part, in English or other languages, is prohibited. Discovery Channel Magazine does not take responsibility for returning unsolicited publication material. • Published and distributed monthly by Living Media India Ltd. (Regd. Office: K-9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi – 110001) under license granted by Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd., 21 Media Circle #8-01, Singapore 138562. • All Discovery Channel logos © 2014 Discovery Communications, LLC. Discovery Channel and the Discovery Channel logo are trademarks of Discovery Communications, LLC, used under licence. All rights reserved. • The views and opinions expressed or implied in Discovery Channel Magazine do not necessarily reflect those of Living Media India Ltd., MediaCorp Pte Ltd or Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific, including their directors and editorial staff. • All information is correct at the time of going to print. • All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi / New Delhi only. • Published & printed by Ashish Bagga on behalf of Living Media India Limited. Printed at Thomson Press India Limited 18 - 35, Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad - 121 007, (Haryana). Published at K - 9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi - 110 001. • Editor: Jamal Shaikh
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Thinking up an idea to write this Editor’s Note, I spoke to three teenage kids about what they wanted to be when they grew up. I wanted to know how thought processes had changed; when I was young, the most common of life’s ambitions was “to be an astronaut.” My first understudy, 13, said he wanted to be Steve Jobs. The second, a beautiful young girl aged 16, said she wanted to be “like Katy Perry.” And the third, at 18, wanted to be a fashion designer. Creative thinking shapes society and must be celebrated. Hence, the Understudy Three got my first vote and applause. The other two were blinded by celebrity; they needed somebody to show them the essence behind the lives of the personalities they idolised. “To be an astronaut” was so much simpler. Those of you scorning my teenage friends (and casting a shadow of doubt on my selection), please be warned: Flying into space was as unachievable for most as it is today to be a fly-by-night pop star. The idea may have died out as we grew up, but let us admit, our fascination for Space and the vastness beyond remains. This month’s cover story ‘Living on a Space Station’ takes you into a world beyond imagination. Defying gravity and resting
in an oddly upright position is one thing, getting your body’s digestion systems used to working their way upwards rather than downwards is quite another. It’s highly detailed and slightly gory in parts, but it will give you an insight that no Sandra Bullock-George Clooney starring blockbuster ever can. Elsewhere in this issue, you’ll find fascinating pictures of Africa’s Voodoo festival, a first person account of a hostage who fought his way to freedom, and an insight into the intriguing world of 3D that can turn imagination into reality. Like my parting advice to my new teenage friends, when I told them to fly high, this edition will show you how to soar higher than you can ever imagine... Enjoy!
Jamal Shaikh Editorial Director
twitter.com/JamalShaikh instagram.com/JamalShaikh
ISSUE 07/14
CONTENTS DEPARTMENTS
FRONTIERS
ROBOTIC STARE
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Cyborg stares get a new life as their eye-behaviour goes through transformation
28
NEWS
ENRICHED BY THE BARD
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Shakespeare's contribution went further than just literature SCIENCE
CHEMICAL ACTION
22
What you should know about common chemicals and elements HISTORY
ESCOBAR AND HIS WHIMS
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The drug warlord's many feathers on his much-maligned cap ADVENTURE
QUICK RESPONSE
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And we thought there was no way out of quicksand adventure. It turns out that this too can be managed
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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE WOW 10 THOROUGHBREDS GET THEIR OWN OPERATION THEATRE THE GRID 13 HEROES WHO MAKE THEIR JOBS SEEM RIGHT-HAND TRICKS, RESEARCH ON RAIN AND TRIVIA ON EXPERIMENTS NAKED WRESTLING 14 JAPANESE PRIESTS AND THEIR POWERS OVER THEIR MEN
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PUNCHING REALITY 18 FACTS ABOUT SCUFFLES SEEN IN THE ACTION MOVIES WE LOVE
FACE OFF 20 THE HISTORY OF COMMONLY FOUND TYPEFACE AND THEIR USAGE IN EVERYDAY PLACE
CANTONESE PROVERBS ON A SINGLE CANVAS. 81 OF THEM JOSTLING FOR SPACE IN A NICE WAY
PREVIOUS CENTURY'S LAST YEAR 18 WHEN KASPORAV, BILL GATES, HICHAM EL GUERROJ AND THE KING OF BHUTAN MADE NEWS. ALSO THE LAST SUPPER IS RE-DISPLAYED AFTER 22 YEARS OF PAINSTAKING RESTORATION WORK
LEGO PHONES NEXT 22 PHONEBLOKS: THE NEW KIND OF PHONE MADE OF DETACHABLE INDIVIDUAL BLOCKS
WHAT'S ON 102 JOIN THE NAKED CASTAWAY AS HE FINDS WAYS TO SURVIVE CERTAIN DEATH ON AN ISLAND, TEST YOUR JUDGEMENTS IN DEADLY DILEMMAS AND FOLLOW THE ALASKAN GOLD DIGGERS, ALL THIS ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL THIS JULY
VISUAL APHORISMS 24 ARTISTIC WAYS OF EXPLAINING THE
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FEATURES ISSUE 07/14 PHOTO-ESSAY
VOODOO ENIGMA
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It takes courage to get into the vodoo heartland and capture, on lens, the festival goings-on and rituals ADVENTURE
A SPACE ODYSSEY
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Life on board the International Space Station is calm (as long as nobody burps). We talk to an astronaut who's been there
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PSYCHOLOGY
TAKEN CAPTIVE
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"Tied, taped and mummified in a scalding metal box", how did one man survive his ordeal? How does any hostage? SCI-TECH
3D EXPERIENCES
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When you can simulate just about anything you can imagine in 3D, the sky's the limit. Will it change the world? Copy that POLITICS
WATERGATE SCANDAL REVISITED
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Rebuilding the chain of events of a scandal that rocked the US Presidency. Discovery Channel gets all the key players, in the real life drama and the movie that followed, together to relive the trials
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THERAPY FOR THOROUGHBREDS A racehorse is hoisted onto an equine operating table ahead of its operation at Newmarket Equine Hospital, about 65 miles north of London in England, which is the birthplace and global centre of thoroughbred racing. It is the largest equine hospital in Europe and the world's leading centre for arthroscopy and fracture repair on horses. The clinic was purposebuilt in 2008 and focuses on personalised high quality veterinary and emergency care for horses from all over the world. There is a specialised 24-hour emergency service by a highly skilled team of senior equine veterinary specialists, nurses, interns and yard staff, offering a range of services including MRI scans, X-ray and arthroscopic surgery. The centre was visited recently by a delegation from China's Ministry of Import Controls ahead of a proposed agreement to export thoroughbreds and sports horses from Britain to China. If the agreement goes ahead, horse exports to China could soon be worth 10 million pounds (US$17 million) a year to the British economy. 10 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
By Dan Kitwood
WOW
11 JULY 2014
ISSUE 07/14
ILLUSTRATION: CARLO GIAMBARRESI AT ILLUSTRATIONROOM.COM.AU
FRONTIERS
CYBORG STARES GET A NEW LIFE
IMPROVED EYE BEHAVIOUR FOR ROBOTS The eyes are the windows to the soul, as they say. So if you want to make a robot look more human, best start there. Up until now, robots have mainly been saddled with a soulless gaze that peers at you with laser-like focus. And as anyone who’s engaged in a staring contest will tell you, that’s not natural. Research shows that in normal conversation, listeners look at a speaker 70 percent of the time, while speakers hold a gaze for about 40 percent of the time they’re talking. Hence, researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison have designed a ‘robot gaze shifting programme’ that
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mimics this behavior, alternately glancing and gazing rather than just full-time gaping. Users found that this robot was deemed more intentional, thoughtful, and creative. It might seem trivial, but such tweaks will help bridge the ‘uncanny valley’ and help us all feel more comfortable with increasingly common human-to-robot interaction, (by which we mean, the coming cyborg war). It’s also a reminder of how even a small miscalculation of your eye behaviour can make you seem like a dead-eyed weirdo. Best start practicing in the mirror.
NEWS
THE GRID AMERICAS
EUROPE
MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA
the old methods are the best. Five snorkelers were saved by a keen-eyed helicopter rescue crew off the northeastern coast of Australia recently, after their boat drifted away. Caught on a tiny sandbar, the victims stamped the huge letters SOS onto the ground. The lucky survivors, three men and two women were winched up by basket, probably while finishing construction of their coconut two-way radio (a la Gilligan’s Island).
BEAR AWARE A Canadian man has been honoured with a bravery award after rescuing a co-worker from a bear. Daniel Morrison received the Star of Courage after going after it with nothing but a knife, as it charged his female colleague. In the same ceremony, another man received a medal of bravery for tackling a robber who inexplicably decided to hold up a gas station — with a Molotov cocktail. Canada: the place where craziness can be averted by an everyday hero.
FIRESTARTER An Irish teenager is being hailed for his fearlessness after he tackled a deranged man who was close to setting himself and a group of bystander children on fire. The 18-year-old Paul Russell later told press, “At the start we thought he was going to do a trick with fire. I don’t know if I punched him or pushed him, I just wanted to get him away from the fire.” Footage of the events, which happened outside Belfast City Hall, has been published online.
SNIFFING OUT EXPLOSIVES Aged just four, Sasha
SATELLITE SHOWERS
GOT YOU COVERED The
FOUR-WHEEL DRY
GOODBYE GREENER
FLIP THE DRIP The
BLIND TO HOBOS You’d recognise a loved one pretty much anywhere, right? Not if they’re dressed as a homeless person, shows a depressing new experiment in New York. When a family member of a participant was dressed as a street person, not a single passerby recognised their mother, brother or wife. The campaign, called Make Them Visible, produced an emotional video of the experiment, which aims to shed light on the plight of the homeless.
LUCKY NUMBER SIX
A S I A- PAC I F I C
RAIN
HEROES
SO CLICHED Sometimes,
EXPERIMENTS
STRANGE AND SERIOUS EVENTS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD
Together with NASA, the Japanese space agency JAXA have launched a Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory satellite. The rain-sensing satellite can X-ray tropical cyclones and rainstorms from space. Thanks to GPM, scientists can now create a visual map of how much snow and rainfall dots the globe every three hour. “[The] measurements will look like a CAT scan,” says Dr. Dalia Kirschbaum. world’s longest-running experiment has finally reached a climax. An 84-year-long experiment at the University of Queensland in Australia has aimed to capture blobs of tar as they drop down from their parent blob. It’s been over 13 years since it happened last, and it’s only occurred nine times total. The point of the experiment? To demonstrate that solid materials can flow like liquids. The thrilling blob has its own live web stream.
only question is, why hasn’t it been done before? New Yorkers may soon be able to leave their umbrellas at home thanks to ‘brellaBox, a brolly rental service. Much like bike share services that are sweeping cities around the world, ‘brellaBox aims to have umbrellas in public spots around town which can be rented cheaply should wet weather strike, at a cost of just US$2.50 for 12 hours. Here’s hoping the idea spreads like the wind.
Of Mice and Men
Nissan’s European Technical Centre is testing a car model for people who hate taking their auto to the car wash. The technology, dubbed Ultra-Ever Dry, features nano-paint technology that repels mud, rain and gunk and, it’s thought, only has to be applied once. So far Nissan says it “has responded well to common use cases including rain, spray, frost, sleet and standing water.” Now if only they can extend that technology to dishes and clothes.
has just received a posthumous medal for bravery. The Labrador, who was trained to detect explosives, was given the PDSA Dickin medal for services to the British army in Afghanistan. Sasha was killed along with her handler in a Taliban ambush in 2008. They were credited with 15 finds, detecting mortars, mines and improvised explosive devices. To date, 65 animals have received the Dickin medal, including 29 dogs and a cat.
According to a recent study published in the journal Nature, the Congo rainforest is losing its greenery due to years of dry conditions. For several decades, the average rainfall in the region has been declining. Surprisingly, however, scientists say this is not because of climate change, but likely part of a natural cycle. Either way, the repercussions could be severe, turning the lush forests into a savanna-like environment.
Not a fan of a long workday? You might want to move to Sweden, where in the city of Gothenburg, a section of public sector employees will now work for just six hours a day. Their performance will be compared with a control group who work regular hours ( just seven hours in Sweden). Both groups will then have their performances compared. Gothenburg’s mayor told press he hopes “staff members would take fewer sick days.”
WHAT IF THE RESULTS OF EVERY EXPERIMENT EVER DONE WITH RODENTS WERE JUST A LITTLE BIT SKEWED? IT MAY BE THE CASE. STUDENTS AT MCGILL UNIVERSITY IN CANADA RECENTLY REALISED THAT MALE RATS DIDN’T SEEM TO SHOW SIGNS OF PAIN WHEN HANDLED BY MALE RESEARCHERS. THIS LED TO AN EXPERIMENT WHICH REVEALED THAT MALE MICE REACT TO A MAN’S PRESENCE BY RELEASING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF STRESS HORMONES. WHEN A WOMAN WAS AROUND, THIS DID NOT OCCUR.
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NEWS E.T PHONE HOME
750,000
POSSIBLE NUMBER OF OLD VIDEOGAME CARTRIDGES FROM THE 1980S WHICH MAY BE BURIED IN A NEW MEXICO LANDFILL IN THE US
1982
ONE WAS FOUND RECENTLY: THE 1983 VIDEO GAME TIE-IN TO THE MOVIE E.T. STILL CONSIDERED ONE OF THE CRUMMIEST GAMES EVER
US$20,000,000
IT IS SAID THAT ATARI’S E.T. PROJECT HELPED DOOM THE COMPANY, WHICH PAID US$20 MILLION IN LICENSING FEES. THE DESIGNER, WHO VIEWED THE GAME’S UNEARTHING, TOLD PRESS THAT HE CREATED THE GAME IN JUST FIVE WEEKS
A WORLD WITHOUT SHAKESPEARE The Bard’s contribution to history and English language
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which Shakespeare has been translated and adopted in each national literature in term.” Let’s not forget the playwright’s methods, which changed drama forever. Like “his habit of perfectly juxtaposing stories within different social milieu, which comment on one another and collide,” says Dobson, referring to the “upstairs downstairs plotting of Twelfth Night”. You can find echoes of that technique anywhere from Dickens through to Downton Abbey today. “And every war movie, cross-cutting between the infantrymen and the officers, owes much to Henry V.” So let’s say we did live in a world without Will, where if you said, “To be or not to be”, people would snort, “That is a stupid question.” Could a substitute have risen to take Shakespeare’s place? Dobson isn’t so sure. “The more you read the plays of his contemporaries, the more odd and unique Shakespeare seems. His plays are less definitive and less finished than those of any other writer.” This leaves us room to fill them with our imagination, he says, “so that they always seem to be about us.” Quite simply, “he underlies much of what we are and how we mean.” If all the world’s a stage, then Shakespeare made it so.
Naked Wrestling
When the Japanese priests take their powers to bizarre heights
Men in loincloths participate in the Hadaka Matsuri, or Naked Festival at Saidaiji Temple in Okayama, Japan. In this, one of the most vibrant festivals in Japan, some 9,000 men battle to grab a pair of lucky sticks thrown by priests.
Quote Unquote “STARLINGS ARE LEAN AND MEAN. IN THEINDUSTRYTHEY’RE OFTEN CALLED FEATHEREDBULLETS”
MICHAEL BEGIER, NATIONAL COORDINATOR FOR THE US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AIRPORTS WILDLIFE HAZARDS PROGRAMME
Know what else we can thank Shakespeare for? Epic, locust-like clouds of starlings. In 1890, a man named Eugene Schieffelin thought that as many birds
as possible named in the Bard’s plays should be present in the USA. So he released 60 starlings, mentioned in Henry IV Part I into New York’s Central Park. Today, they are a pest — as Michael Begier told BBC — with about 200 million of them presenting a huge problem of birdstrike on airplanes. In 1960 they caused the most deadly strike in aviation history, killing 62 passengers. They also cost US agriculture US$1 billion a year in damage to crops. Thanks a bunch, William.
5,000,000
Every winter evening,
five million starlings flock into Rome. It’s a beautiful aerial display — which leaves the Eternal City covered in bird poop. So the next time you’re on the Via Veneto in January, don’t look up
2008
In 2008 alone, the US government poisoned, shot and trapped 1.7 million starlings, to no effect
DRC-1339
The name of the poison that agents use to fell starlings, often by sprinkling them on their favourite snack — French fries Ellabo. Et magnis atem veleceperae nim quodige
PHOTO: JAPANESE FESTIVAL (GETTY IMAGES)
Picturing world literature without William Shakespeare is like picturing music without Mozart, or fast food without McDonalds. But as countries around the planet celebrate the Bard’s 450th birthday, it’s worth pondering how history would have changed without everyone’s favourite word-slinger. Let’s start with the obvious: the insanely huge number of words and phrases attributed to him. Eyeball, fashionable, hot-blooded, gloomy, gossip, laughable, lonely, newfangled — even the humble ‘knock knock’ joke dates back to Macbeth. “Here’s a knocking indeed!” crows the most famous stage Porter ever. “Knock, knock, knock! Where’s there, i’ th’ name of Belzebub?” As Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham affirms, without Shakey, historians would be on shaky ground indeed. “We’d be missing many, many interconnections between cultures and between the past, the present and the future.” How so? He explains: “the fact that the modern world has any notion of ‘world literature’ at all is based on the way in
ADVENTURE FIGHT CLUB
REAL ON REEL FIGHTING
For all the punches you believed to be true-life action
Here’s a sucker punch for you — real life fighting is nothing like the movies. Let’s compare celluloid scuffles with the real thing
FISTS A knuckle is a fragile thing. Punch someone in the face and you’ll likely break your hand, not their nose. The condition is so common it’s known as ‘boxer’s fracture’ or a ‘bar room’s fracture’. If you break the knuckle on your little finger, it’s a ‘brawler’s fracture’.
TEETH Here’s another term for you — ‘fight bite’ — namely when you try to punch someone in the head and connect with their sharp teeth. Hey presto, you’ve got yourself a nice infection to go with that nasty cut of yours.
KO, NOT OK In the movies, a knockout blow is a plot point. In real life, it’s a life or death emergency that can lead to a concussion, traumatic brain injury or internal hemorrhage. In real life, James Bond would be a drooling simpleton by now.
Postman Pat, Crime Lord
Is there any children’s character so harmless and beloved as Postman Pat? He’s got a black and white cat, a cheery smile — and a scent of criminality about him. At least in Japan, anyway. If you’re wondering why, just count his fingers. With just four digits, he comes up short. And when Pat was exported to Japan in 1994, that was a big no-no. Why? Because the Japanese Yakuza traditionally cut off one of their fingers as a sign of faith and personal strength. Or as a punishment. It’s a wellknown calling card, and not one that Japanese TV executives wanted mixed up with friendly neighbourhood postmen. So for local broadcasts, Pat got the five-finger treatment, being touched up so that he looked less terrifying. In 2000, Bob the Builder got the same treatment for the Japanese market. A WORLD WITHOUT HEAVY WEAPONS?
SHOULDER WOUNDS The refuge of the hero — the sexylooking wound right? Wrong. In a study of 16 shoulder-shot victims, four died and another lost the arm. Others routinely lost all feeling. So how did McClane keep punching terrorists?
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BOTTLES As the MythBusters will tell you, getting smashed over the head with an empty or a full beer bottle will cut your skull to ribbons. The full beer bottle will also likely kill you, than simply comically stunning you.
DEADLY WEAPONS Travelling to Texas? Ditch the bulletproof vest for a helmet. The Lone Star State is famed for guns, but a 2013 report found that only 87 people were killed by firearms while 101 were by “hands, fists and feet”.
ACTION MOVIE SHOOTOUTS GET MORE DULL THAT’S LITERALLY THE ONLY DOWNSIDE
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (REAL ON REEL FIGHTING); 2007 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD)
KICKS AND FLICK S
HISTORY
Surprise! Surprise! he had more feathers on his cap
Q: Who was the biggest drug dealer in the world during the Victorian era?
In the 1980s and ‘90s, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was responsible for up to 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the USA
A: Queen Victoria. By 1836, 30,000 opium chests were arriving in China annually from India, Britain’s colony. China’s attempts to stop the flow of the illegal drug, which was creating an army of addicts, led to two Opium Wars between China and Britain in 1839 and 1856, which saw the British take control of Hong Kong.
60,000 victims
According to Human Rights Watch, violence between the Mexican government and local drug cartels saw 60,000 people killed between 2006 and 2012.
The Year That Was: 1999
CHESS WIZARD GARRY KASPAROV PLAYS A MATCH AGAINST AN ASSEMBLED FORCE OF 50,000 PEOPLE ONLINE. THOUGH HE WINS, KASPAROV LATER ADMITS IT WAS HIS MOST CHALLENGING MATCH, AND “THE SHEER NUMBER OF IDEAS, THE COMPLEXITY, AND THE CONTRIBUTION IT MADE TO CHESS MAKE IT THE MOST IMPORTANT GAME EVER PLAYED.” BILL GATES’ PERSONAL FORTUNE CLEARS THE US$100 BILLION MARK. AS OF LAST YEAR HE HAS DONATED OVER US$26 BILLION TO CHARITY. AFTER 22 LONG YEARS OF RESTORATION, LEONARDO DA VINCI’S THE LAST SUPPER IS RE-DISPLAYED IN MILAN. THE KING OF BHUTAN ALLOWS TELEVISION BROADCASTS IN HIS COUNTRY FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, BECOMING THE LAST NATION IN THE WORLD TO DO SO. IN BRAZIL, 345 PRISONERS ESCAPE FROM PUTIM PRISON — BY WALKING OUT THE FRONT GATE. COLOMBIA ANNOUNCES IT WILL INCLUDE THE ESTIMATED VALUE OF ITS ILLEGAL DRUG CROPS IN ITS GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT, ACCOUNTING FOR UP TO FIVE PERCENT OF ITS GDP. “KING OF THE MILE” HICHAM EL GUERROJ OF MOROCCO SETS THE CURRENT WORLD RECORD FOR A MILE RUN AT 3:43.13 MINUTES.
Quote Unquote
60,000 words At the height of his power he was named the seventh-richest man in the world on the Forbes rich list, with a net worth of US$30 billion
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his masterpiece, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thanks to a rather epic cocaine binge. “That an invalid in my husband’s condition should have been able to perform the manual labour alone of putting 60,000 words to paper in six days, seems almost incredible,” his wife later said.
I Oreos
A 2013 study by American neuroscientists found that rats find Oreos as addictive as cocaine, as they stimulate the brain in the At one point he was same way. The rats also eat ‘em reportedly spending US$2,500 per month on just like you do — by breaking the rubber bands to hold his cookies apart and snarfing the bricks of cash together cream first. 18 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
JESSE OWENS Gold-medal winning Olympian
The world famous Olympic African-American track and field star recounts his unlikely friendship at the 1936 Berlin Olympics with Nazi rival Luz Long, who gave Owens advice to help him qualify for the long jump. A popular misconception, however, is that Hitler snubbed Owen, when in fact the dictator sent the athlete a signed photo of himself, so impressed was he by the sprinter’s gold medal win. Owens even later confirmed: “Hitler didn’t snub me — it was FDR [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.” He added, “I came back to my native country and I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus.”
TALES FROM THE GAMES OF THE XI OLYMPIAD "YOU CAN MELT DOWN ALL THE MEDALS AND CUPS I HAVE, AND THEY WOULDN'T BE A PLATING ON THE 24-CARAT FRIENDSHIP I FELT FOR LUZ LONG AT THAT MOMENT. HITLER MUST HAVE GONE CRAZY WATCHING US EMBRACE."
150,000 people reportedly watched the 1936 Olympics on TV, which were the first games ever to be televised
In 2013, one of Owens’s four Olympic medals sold for US$1.4 million, the highest price ever paid for Olympic memorabilia
Other Olympic events in 1936 saw medals awarded for architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture
IMAGES: WWW.NARRENHAND.DE (PABLO ESCOBAR); GETTY IMAGES (JESSE OWENS) ICONS: TONY MICHIELS (MONEY); LUIS PRADO (DONKEY) FROM THE NOUN PROJECT
ESCOBAR: THE RUBBER BARON
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MASS PRODUCED
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TYPEFACE TRIVIA
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Meet six fonts with backstories that will make you ditch "ARIEL" for good
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EDUCATION
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THE FIRST KNOWN USE OF THE FAMOUS PHRASE “THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG" WAS IN 1885. THE PHRASE FIRST APPEARED IN THE MICHIGAN SCHOOL MODERATOR, AND IS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF A PANGRAM OR HOLOALPHABETIC SENTENCE, WHICH CONTAINS ALL 26 LETTERS. OTHERS INCLUDE “SPHINX OF BLACK QUARTZ, JUDGE MY VOW,” WHICH SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE JOINING A CULT, AND “PACK MY BOX WITH FIVE DOZEN LIQUOR JUGS,” WHICH SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE BUYING DRINKS FOR AN ENTIRE CULT.
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The great thing about hand-painted signs is that they seem more amenable to levity, like the restaurant closed sign that read “Shut happens”. Elsewhere, Signs for the Homeless is a charity project that even jazzes up homeless person’s cardboard signs.
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Alphabet Soup
Eurostile, the font used on most car dashboards, may cause crashes, say the designers of Burlingame. Eurostile is “so not legible”, says one designer. In one study, alternate fonts such as Burlingame offered a 13 percent improvement in the participants’ overall response time.
SIGN WRITING
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Eat your heart out, Dakar Rally. The Mayfair Blindman Car Rally in India sees sighted drivers directed by a blind navigator using a map wholly in Braille — for a 45 kilometer journey. The ultimate trust test. And there you thought that reading on bumpy roads was hard.
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Artist Marcus Reed turns the humdrum ‘A is for Apple’ on its head with his gorgeous project Animal Alphabet. Good thing he wasn’t working with the 33-letter Russian Cryllic alphabet, which includes the letter “ ” or “yu” (which denotes a goldfish?).
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Ahh, nostalgia in a can. The only font that can make you feel like you’re a hacker from 1981. For body text, designers recommend a minimum of 14 pixel font, or legibility is shot and your eyes will probably explode. A good font to use if you’re after an ‘80s retro vibe.
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Thanks to its gravitas, Blackletter is found not just in the Gutenberg Bible, the book that spawned the age of the printed book in the West, but in newspaper nameplates, Corona beer labels and metal head album covers. It's also known as Gothic script or Old English.
PHOTO: DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (GAME OF STONES) TYPEFACE: MARCUS REED (ANIMAL ALPHABET)
8-BIT GAMING
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BLACKLETTER
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TECHNOLOGY WWW.THESECRETTOAHAPPYMARRIAGE.COM
1 IN 3
A STUDY OF AMERICAN COUPLES FROM 2005 TO 2012 FOUND THAT MORE THAN A THIRD OF MARRIED COUPLES MET ONLINE
92%
7,000
OF THE COUPLES STAYED TOGETHER, A DIVORCE RATE OF UNDER EIGHT PERCENT (THE NATIONAL RATE IS UP TO 50 PERCENT)
ONE ANALYSIS OF 7,000 PHOTOS ON OKCUPID.COM, CONDUCTED IN 2010, FOUND THAT MEN WERE MORE SUCCESSFUL IF THEY DID NOT SMILE, AND WERE LOOKING AWAY FROM THE CAMERA. WOMEN WERE MORE SUCCESSFUL IF THEY MADE A FLIRTY FACE AND LOOKED AT THE CAMERA
iPhone, Bye-phone FLUSH THE WORLD AWAY Lego phones in the making The flush toilet is seen as the touchstone of modern civilisation, a convenience most of us could not live without. But your toilet may actually be bad for your health. It’s certainly bad for the planet’s. For ages, humans have squatted to poop. Proponents of squat defecation say this is far healthier than the position we adopt on a modern loo, where we lean forward, blocking the faeces from coming out. Although not many clinical studies have been done, proponents of the squat position say it reduces the risk of hemorrhoids, colon
disease, pelvic floor issues, and even heart attacks — which is why Peter Codling, a postgraduate student of Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art in London, in the United Kingdom, this year created Le Penseur, or “The Thinker”. This squat toilet, he explains, leaves the puborectalis muscle relaxed, allowing quick and complete expulsion of waste.
Social Media Saving Lives Suicide watch
In 2009, actress Demi Moore retweeted a follower’s post prefixed with “Hope you are joking”. The original post said, “Getting a knife, a big one that is sharp. Going to cut down the whole arm so it doesn’t waste time.” Moore’s followers mobilised to find the woman, who was brought in for treatment. Sharp-eyed nurse
Clicking through Facebook photos of her friend’s new baby, an English nurse saw something strange.
Instead of the usual red-eye effect, one of the baby’s eyes was white — a sign of possible eye cancer. The baby was quickly rushed to hospital, where doctors found two tumours and treated them.
DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
Quote Unquote
Carjack freedom
Hijacked and forced into the boot of his car, a South African man texted his girlfriend, who tweeted his license plate number to her followers. Within two hours, K9 Law Enforcement had tracked him using his mobile phone.
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Fed up with buying a new smartphone, TV, computer or music player every few years? Blame planned obsolescence. It is a business strategy whereby manufacturers plan for their product to be out-of-date, broken or unfashionable within a period of time. This forces consumers to buy another model. Hey presto — guaranteed profits. Giles Slade opens his book Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America with sharp words for this strategy. “If human history reserves a privileged place for the Egyptians because of their rich conception of the afterlife,” he asks, “what place will it reserve for a people who, in their seeming worship of convenience and greed, leave behind mountains of electronic debris?” Luckily, there’s an (as yet theoretical) obsolescence-busting device by designer Dave Hakkens. In his own words, Phonebloks is “a new kind of phone made of detachable blocks all connected to a base. And the base connects everything together”. So you can swap out a new GPS, camera, Bluetooth, processor
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, 34TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
— whatever you want to upgrade — as and when. DCM loves your idea of “a phone worth keeping”, Hakkens. May your brain never become obsolete.
MORE OBSOLETE-PROOF STUFF, PLEASE CLOTHES
Keep ‘em long enough and everything becomes retro-cool anyway
IPODS Curse you, un-replaceable battery!
DAIRY PRODUCTS
We’re tired of buying new yoghurt every month just because the expired stuff has started moving around in the fridge
“THE COST OF ONE MODERN HEAVY BOMBER IS THIS: A MODERN BRICK SCHOOL IN MORE THAN 30 CITIES. IT IS TWO ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS, EACH SERVING A TOWN OF 60,000 POPULATION. IT IS TWO FINE, FULLY EQUIPPED HOSPITALS”
The words of the 34th United States President may seem surprising, given that Eisenhower served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in World War II. But perhaps
time in battle made him see that “every gun that is made, every warship launched signifies… a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.” Things haven’t changed for the better since Eisenhower made his “Chance for Peace” speech in April 1953. The cost of a B-2 stealth bomber could build over 4,500 homes. In 2012, world military spending reached roughly US$1.75 trillion. Meanwhile, spending on foreign aid was US$126 billion.
ILLUSTRATIONS: BEN MOUNSEY, ICON: THE NOUN PROJECT, SIMON CHILD (GUN)
Your life depends on it
HISTORY
ILLUSTRATION: AH TO/PASSION TIMES (CANTONESE PROVERBS) PHOTO: LONDON SCIENCE MUSEUM (STROMUHR)
HOW WELL DO YOU SPELL?
Children spelling some of the toughest words on the planet
On May 29 Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe won the 87th Scripps National Spelling Bee held in the United States. Think you can ace all of the winning words of past events? Some of them are rather easy (“interning”, really?) in DCM’s opinion, but most of the words after ‘94 give us an instant migraine.
1950 Meticulosity 1951 Insouciant 1952 Vignette 1953 Soubrette 1954 Transept 1955 Crustaceology 1956 Condominium 1957 Schappe 1958 Syllepsis 1959 Catamaran 1960 Eudaemonic 1961 Smaragdine 1962 Esquamulose 1963 Equipage 1964 Sycophant 1965 Eczema 1966 Ratoon 1967 Chihuahua 1968 Abalone 1969 Interlocutory 1970 Croissant 1971 Shalloon 1972 Macerate 1973 Vouchsafe 1974 Hyrdophyte 1975 Incisor 1976 Narcolepsy 1977 Cambist 1978 Deification 1979 Maculature 1980 Elucubrate 1981 Sarcophagus 1982 Psoriasis 1983 Purim 1984 Luge 1985 Milieu 1986 Odontalgia
1987 Staphylococci 1988 Elegiacal 1989 Spoliator 1990 Fibranne 1991 Antipyretic 1992 Lyceum 1993 Kamikaze 1994 Antediluvian 1995 Xanthosis 1996 Vivisepulture 1997 Euonym 1998 Chiaroscurist 1999 Logorrhea 2000 Demarche 2001 Succedaneum 2002 Prospicience 2003 Pococurante 2004 Autochthonous 2005 Appoggiatura 2006 Ursprache 2007 Serrefine 2008 Guerdon 2009 Laodicean 2010 Stromuhr 2011 Cymotrichous 2012 Guetapens 2013 Knaidel
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STROMUHR A rheometer designed to measure the amount and speed of blood flow through an artery
Proverbial Illustration
The challenge of depicting 81 aphorisms on a single canvas HONG KONG GRAPHIC DESIGNER AH TO HAS BEEN GARNERING SOME “AHHS!” HIMSELF. THAT’S THANKS TO HIS ILLUSTRATION OF NO LESS THAN 81 CANTONESE PROVERBS, ALL JOSTLING FOR SPACE IN ONE JAW-DROPPING IMAGE. AS THE LOCALS MIGHT SAY, AH TO IS NO OLD CAT WHO BURNS ITS WHISKERS (MEANING AN EXPERT WHO MAKES A CARELESS MISTAKE IN HIS OWN EXPERTISE). HIS PAINTING IS ITSELF BASED ON A 1559 PIECE BY PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER, ENTITLED NETHERLANDISH PROVERBS, WHICH FEATURES SOME SAYINGS WE STILL USE TODAY, INCLUDING “TO BE ARMED TO THE TEETH” (MEANING TO BE HEAVILY ARMED)
V1 TERROR
There’s a scene in the action novel Scarecrow by Matthew Reilly that some readers consider so ludicrous it defies belief. A nuclear missile launched by a madman is speeding towards its target. The lanternjawed hero has to disarm it: but he has to be within 18 metres for the computer program to link to the warhead. So he steals a fighter jet and disarms the bomb whilst flying alongside. And yet, real life is sometimes stranger than fiction. During World War
II, the Germans peppered London with the V1 flying bomb, one of which could kill thousands of civilians. How could the British Armed Forces possibly combat this scourge? Pilots of the British Royal Air Force proposed a crazy, daring plan: sliding their wingtips to within 15 centimeters of the V1’s wings while the missile was in flight, disrupting the airflow to tip the bombs out of control. Surprisingly, this risky manoeuvre worked, downing dozens of the flying bombs before they reached their targets.
Q: WHICH WAS THE FIRST NATION INTO SPACE? A: Nazi Germany. According to some sources, the V1’s successor, the faster V2 bomb, was the first manmade object to reach an altitude of 80 kilometers, and a speed of 5,300 kilometers per hour, in 1942.
SCIENCE CHEMISTRY
T H E M AT C H U P : C H E M I C A L S A N D E L E M E N T S LIQUIDS
HYDROQUINONE Bombardier beetles mix this with hydrogen peroxide, water and certain enzymes, to produce a 100-degree-Celsius, defensive spray that stings enemies with a “pop!”
MORONIC ACID Only a cretin could forget the name. But its silly moniker belies its serious use: moronic acid is being investigated for its antiHIV properties. It is also known as 3-oxoolean-18-en-28-oic acid.
PERFLUOROCARBONS Breathing in liquids and surviving — that’s the stuff of sci-fi, surely. Nope! Mice have survived being submerged for an hour in a jar of perfluorocarbons, which have a high solubility of oxygen.
SOLID S
Quote Unquote
"DO EXCUSE ME, I HAVE TO GO NOW… I THINK I’VE WON THE NOBEL PRIZE"
Sir Paul Nurse Geneticist
SODIUM CARBON Many of the foods we love would A world without carbon is a world be inedible without salt, notes without humans; diamonds; Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar plants (which take in carbon Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked dioxide); Formula One cars (which Us. He says that all cereals, “with- usually have a carbon-fibre chasout salt, tasted like metal”. sis); and fossil fuels, among others.
THALLIUM A gram of this odourless, colourless metal is toxic enough to kill you, and it is banned in most places. In the 1960s, the CIA hatched a plot to use thallium to make Fidel Castro’s beard fall out.
GASES
HYDROGEN The most abundant element, making up 90 percent of the universe by weight. Without hydrogen, we have no water. But pure hydrogen is also flammable and has sparked several disasters.
NITROGEN Love crunching on crisps? Thank nitrogen! This relatively inert gas is pumped into crisp packets to protect them in transit, and stop oxygen getting in, which would make them soggy.
SMYLEX This fictional gas is one of the Joker’s weapons, allowing the villain to induce a rictus grin and helpless laughter in his victims. Deadly stuff — but maybe a dose of diluted Smylex wouldn’t hurt?
TOP THREE WINNERS
SODIUM Too much is bad for you, but a total lack of salt would make us recite Professor Farnsworth’s famous line from the cartoon Futurama: “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.” 26 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
SMYLEX PERFLUOROCARBONS A poll of 150 countries last year Liquid breathing, people! If mice asked thousands, “Did you smile can do it, then surely human trior laugh a lot yesterday?” Singa- als aren't far away, turning James pore, Lithuania, Georgia and RusCameron’s 1989 film The Abyss sia ranked bottom of the list. Time (which saw a rat submerged in to pop a (non-deadly) Smylex pill. fluorocarbons) into reality.
Each year, the Nobel Prize committee informs the winners of this honour by phone — which can make for some miscommunications. In 2001, geneticist Sir Paul Nurse was at a meeting when he received a note from his secretary: “Turn on your phone.” He did so, to hear a voice message from someone with a heavy Swedish accent, informing him that he had won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine. Dazed, Nurse told his fellow scientist to excuse him from the meeting. His companion was James Watson, who curiously had also won a Nobel for his research into the structure of DNA in 1962. FANCY A NOBEL PRIZE? IT HELPS IF YOU'RE AN OLD AMERICAN MAN
AVERAGE AGE OF WINNER: 59 807 WINNERS HAVE BEEN MEN, AND ONLY 44 WOMEN 30 PERCENT OF WINNERS COME FROM THE UNITED STATES
ADVENTURE HUNGRY EARTH
SLOWNESS OF QUICKSAND Fear no
It’s your worst nightmare: Tramping through the Marshy Marsh of Deadly Death, you sink into a devious pool of quicksand, which sucks you into oblivion. That’s in the movies, anyway. But how dangerous is quicksand in real life? And what is it? Think of quicksand as a beach — but instead of water on the
coast, the particles of sand are lubricated by a source of water from below. This lessens the friction between the particles, so they’re unable to support weight from above. Luckily, quicksand pits are only at their most dangerous if they are deep enough, and it’s rare they will actually submerge an adult human. True, if you do get stuck
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to waist-height there’s a chance you’ll dehydrate or get mauled by an animal. So you’d better get out quick then! Here’s how. Don't panic, for the love of all that is good! Sorry to shout, but seriously, don’t struggle — your thrashing will only mire you deeper, into the embrace of the
sand. Having said that, drowning in quicksand is near-impossible because the sand particles will provide some flotation. Keep this in mind while you remove any heavy items like a backpack, so you’re freer to move. Float on your back and grapple for the edge of the pit, before pulling yourself free. You can even sort of swim to shore — slowly. Know what’s more dangerous than a patch of quicksand? A bog. These are wetland marshes that appear solid, but are actually a tricky carpet of soil, decomposed matter and water. Many people get lost or drown in bogs around the world every year. The only consolation is that peat bogs will preserve your body for thousands of years, as the high acidity and lack of oxygen prevents bacteria from decaying the remains. Pictured here (above left) is Tollund Man, a Danish bog body found in 1950. Although over 2,000 years old, he was mistaken for a recent murder victim. Not surprising, considering they could still make out his fingerprints.
More! Get over it. 1 FEAR OF AXE
MURDERS TIME TO GET OVER IT PEOPLE SUFFERING MENTAL ILLNESSES ARE UP TO 10 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE THE VICTIMS OF CRIME THAN THE GENERAL POPULATION
2 FEAR OF CREEPY-
CRAWLIES HOW COMMON IS IT? A 2006 CENSUS OF BRITISH DRIVERS FOUND THAT 650,000 PEOPLE HAD BEEN IN AN AUTO ACCIDENT BECAUSE THEY WERE DISTRACTED BY AN INSECT TIME TO GET OVER IT: IN A 2007 STUDY, RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL, REPORTEDLY CURED 92 PER CENT OF PARTICIPANTS OF ARACHNOPHOBIA — SIMPLY BY GETTING THEM TO STARE AT “SPIDERLIKE” OBJECTS. THESE INCLUDED A TRIPOD, A CAROUSEL AND A PERSON WITH DREADLOCKS
3 FEAR OF CLOWNS (COULROPHOBIA) HOW COMMON IS IT? A BRITISH HOSPITAL SURVEYED 250 CHILDREN AGED BETWEEN FOUR AND 16 ON WHETHER THEY LIKED CLOWNS AS PART OF HOSPITAL DÉCOR. ALL 250 SAID “NO” (POSSIBLY “PLEASE, NOOOO!”) TIME TO GET OVER IT YOU KNOW WHAT? DON’T GET OVER IT. CLOWNS ARE TERRIFYING. THERE’S A BRITISH PERFORMER CALLED DOMINIC DEVILLE WHO HIRES HIMSELF OUT AS AN EVIL CLOWN. FOR A FEE, HE WILL STALK YOUR CHILD AND POST THEM NOTES THAT THEY’RE BEING WATCHED. “MOST KIDS ABSOLUTELY LOVE BEING SCARED SENSELESS,” HE TOLD PRESS. BUT HE WOULD SAY THAT...BEING AN EVIL CLOWN
COMPILED BY DANIEL SEIFERT
Let not the soil beneath your feet devour you. Here’s how...
FEATURES 40
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54
PAGE 32 THE MANY MYTHS ABOUT VOODOO FOLKLORE
PAGE 68 LIVING THE ADVENTURE DREAMS VIA 3D
PAGE 40 EVERYDAY LIFE ON A SPACE STATION
PAGE 80 ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN DECLASSIFIED
PAGE 54 HELL AND BACK OF BEING HELD HOSTAGE
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THE EGUNGUN ARE MASQUERADED DANCERS WHO REPRESENT THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS OF THE YORUBA, A NIGERIAN ETHNIC GROUP, AND ARE BELIEVED TO VISIT EARTH TO, POSSESS AND GIVE GUIDANCE TO THE LIVING
PHOTOS: DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
OPPOSITE A MAN IN TRANCE DANCES DURING A VOODOO CEREMONY IN OUIDAH, BENIN
32 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
VOODOO FESTIVAL
MEET ME AT THE
VOODOO FESTIVAL Weird, wonderful, surreal and sublime; photographer Daniel Kitwood uses all these words in the same breath as he describes his experiences at the annual Voodoo Festival, on the streets of Ouidah, Benin. Kitwood, who has covered everything from tropical typhoons to urban riots, tells Daniel Seifert why this West African town turned out to be the hardest location he'd ever shot
33 JULY 2014
IT ALL STARTED WITH A PROBLEM OF GETTING THE RIGHT IMAGE OF VOODOO. EXPERIENCED BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHER KNEW WELL ENOUGH THAT THE WORD "VOODOO" RELATES TO MULTIPLE BELIEFS AND HENCE THE IMAGERIES. SO IF HE WANTED A SET OF PERTINENT IMAGES WHAT BETTER PLACE TO EXPERIENCE IT THAN IN OUIDAH, A SMALL COASTAL TOWN OF BENIN WHERE THE RELIGION WAS BORN? HERE, SOME 17 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION STILL PRACTICE VODUN (OR VOUDON), THE LOCAL WORD FOR VOODOO.
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ABOVE AN EGUNGUN PERFORMS DURING A VOODOO CEREMONY LEFT SOMETIMES, ANIMAL SACRIFICES ARE REQUIRED IN VOODOO RITUALS, AS OFFERINGS TO THE GODS. BIRDS SUCH AS PIGEONS (PICTURED) ARE OFTEN USED FOR THIS PURPOSE OPPOSITE MANY VOODOO RITUALS INVOLVE PEOPLE GOING INTO TRANCE
PHOTOS: DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
What were your own preconceptions of voodoo, and how did they change after your shoot? I went with an open mind, and was prepared to be surprised. I really wanted to understand what was going on here, though I probably came away even more confused. Voodoo certainly didn’t follow the usual religious conventions. That said, I realised the
VOODOO FESTIVAL
BENIN, WEST AFRICA
POPULATION
10 MILLION (AS OF 2012)
LIFE EXPECTANCY
59 YEARS (AS OF 2011)
NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES NIGER, TOGO, BURKINA FASO, NIGERIA
HISTORY
DR LESLIE DESMANGLES
WHAT IS VOODOO?
“The use of the term ‘voudon’ … refers to a whole assortment of cultural elements: personal creeds and practices, including an elaborate system of folk medical practices; a system of ethics transmitted across generations [including] proverbs, stories, songs, and folklore... voudon is more than belief; it is a way of life.” IN THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE PARANORMAL
PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS DAHOMEY, BENIN WAS A COLONY OF FRANCE FROM 1894 TO 1960. ALTHOUGH NOT THE CAPITAL, THE TOWN OF OUIDAH IS PERHAPS BENIN’S MOST HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT TOWN. FOR MORE THAN 200 YEARS, THIS PORT WAS ONE OF THE WORLD’S BUSIEST SLAVERY HUBS, WHERE MEN AND WOMEN FROM AS FAR AWAY AS ETHIOPIA WOULD BE SHIPPED OFF TO THE AMERICAS. A MONUMENT THAT STANDS TO THIS DAY IS THE “TREE OF FORGETFULNESS”. MEN WERE FORCED TO WALK AROUND IT NINE TIMES, AND WOMEN AND CHILDREN, SEVEN. THIS WAS SAID TO ERASE ANY THOUGHTS AND MEMORIES OF THEIR LIVES PRIOR TO ENSLAVEMENT. GIVEN THAT IT WAS TRANSPLANTED FROM ITS AFRICAN ORIGINS TO PLACES SUCH AS HAITI, IT SEEMS THE RITUAL HAD LITTLE EFFECT 35 JULY 2014
way it's represented in movies is far from reality. Dolls however, do play an important role — and are often carried as fetishes, which are meant to hold divine powers. Did you have a fixer with you to give you some background? I worked with a local guy, and we drove around on a motorbike, looking for things to shoot. There was no way of knowing when and where something would be happening. It was a case of asking people, and keeping your eyes peeled. I didn’t shoot too much at the festival itself — as it was a bit contrived for visitors. What interested me more were the activities around the fringes of the festival and town. One of the more fascinating sights were the Egungun, the costumed masqueraders who shuffled around town in a hypnotic trance, imparting their "wisdom" to anyone who dared cross their path. They are meant to represent spirits of dead members of the Nigerian Yoruba tribes, and are treated with the utmost respect. My driver found himself backed into a corner by one of them, and fell to the floor. The Egungun bent down and spoke into his ear in a quiet squeaky voice — as its minder held it at arm's length with a stick. There was a real sense of theatre drama and intrigue, and I realised that the people genuinely believed in what was happening, even if I was still slightly sceptical. It seems like it was easy to fall under the spell of the festival. Can you describe the effect that the heady atmosphere had on you? I was taken to a voodoo priest one day, and he conducted a ceremony for me in order to give me blessing for my trip. 36 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
It was incredibly bizarre, and a little unsettling, if I am to be perfectly honest. He cast stones and went into a trancelike state. I wasn't to shoot any pictures of this, but the memory will stick with me for some time. I do feel incredibly privileged to have witnessed something that very few foreigners will ever get to see. How did people react to you wandering around with your camera? I have to be perfectly honest, this was the hardest place I've ever shot pictures. The people really
didn’t want me around, a lot of the time. To shoot many ceremonies, I first had to meet with the priest or an elder, who would then discuss it with other elders. Only when they were happy was I allowed to shoot. This didn't always happen, and a lot of the time I chose to leave, rather than upset people. It was incredibly frustrating, but in some ways it made me confident that what I was witnessing was real, and not put on for the tourists, of which I don’t think there were that many.
VOODOO FESTIVAL
KNOW YOUR VOODOO
LEGBA A LEGBA IS A SMALL CLAY STATUE. THESE ARE FETISHES, REPRESENTATIONS OF VOODOO SPIRITS OFTEN ADORNED WITH STRAW HAIR OR SKIRTS. THEY SERVE AS PROTECTION
PHOTOS: DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
ZANGBETO KNOWN AS THE GUARDIANS OF THE NIGHT, ZANGBETO ARE THE WATCHMEN OF VILLAGES. DURING FESTIVALS, VOODOO PRIESTS WILL OFTEN LIFT PART OF THE HAYSTACK-LIKE COSTUMES TO CONVINCE ONLOOKERS THAT THERE IS NOBODY INSIDE. AFTER PRAYERS, THE COSTUME’S MOVEMENT IS SEEN AS AN INDICATION THAT THE GUARDIAN SPIRIT HAS ENTERED IT
DANGBE
TOP PRACTITIONERS OFTEN USE DOLLS AS SYMBOLS FOR THE LOA, THE SPIRITS THAT MAKE UP THE VOODOO PANTHEON BELOW THE EGUNGUN BENDS DOWN AND SPEAKS INTO KITWORD'S DRIVER'S EAR IN A QUIET SQUEAKY VOICE
THE PYTHON GOD, FAVOURED IN OUIDAH. A TRAVELLER IN THE 1800S NOTED, “A NATIVE OF OUIDAH WHO MEETS A PYTHON IN THE PATH PROSTRATES HIMSELF BEFORE IT, RUBS HIS FOREHEAD ON THE EARTH, AND COVERS HIMSELF WITH DUST, A TOKEN OF HUMILIATION. ‘YOU ARE MY MASTER,’ HE CRIES, ‘YOU ARE MY FATHER, YOU ARE MY MOTHER; MY HEAD BELONGS TO YOU; BE PROPITIOUS TO ME’” 37 JULY 2014
AN EGUNGUN PERFORMING A DANCE. THE EGUNGUN USUALLY SPEAK QUICKLY IN SQUEAKY VOICES 38 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
VOODOO FESTIVAL
DO YOU VOODOO?
HAITI ALTHOUGH THE MAJORITY OF HAITIANS DESCRIBE THEMSELVES AS CATHOLIC, SOME SOURCES SAY AROUND 70 PERCENT ALSO BELIEVE IN VOODOO. A COMMON LOCAL SAYING STATES THAT HAITI IS “70 PERCENT CATHOLIC, 30 PERCENT PROTESTANT AND 100 PERCENT VOODOO”
NEW ORLEANS, USA ESTIMATES OF VOODOO PRACTITIONERS IN THIS CITY RANGE FROM TWO PERCENT TO 15 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION
PHOTOS: DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
THE REGIONAL KING OF ALLADA BLESSES PEOPLE AND ASKS FOR THE PROTECTION OF GOD DURING A CEREMONY IN OUIDAH, BENIN
I mostly like to work quietly around subjects, and try to stay out of the way. I occasionally look at shooting a set of portraits, and in the case of the Egungun, that's what I wanted to do. This was a bit tricky though, as they were supposed to be in a state of trance, so I couldn't really ask. We worked out that the best way of doing it was to figure out which way they were walking, and find an appropriate spot on their route. We would then wait for them to walk into the space, and try and get their attention. This worked out perfectly well and we got some extraordinary shots.
What's the story behind the gorgeous shot of the three revellers? (left page) The shot of the young woman with two men behind her came at the end of my first day in Ouidah. On arrival, I couldn't track down my fixer, but heard there was going to be a ceremony just out of town. I grabbed the first person I could with a bike, and off we went to track it down. Luckily, we found it just as it was to begin. The priest was more than happy for me to be there, but it was a real baptism of fire for me. Women sat around the fire, cutting up a cow and beginning to cook it as part of
the celebration. Drums started to beat, and the shaman began to work. Whistles were blown, to draw out the demons from the gathered people. Several people began to fall into a trance and throw themselves on the floor, before rising again and dancing to the beat of the drums. I had to be quick on my feet, so as not to get caught between them as they flitted between the crowd. I had no idea what was going on really, but I was definitely in voodoo heartland, and was looking forward to the rest of the trip. This was weird and wonderful, surreal and sublime. A real attack on all the senses.
TOGO BENIN’S NEIGHBOUR HAS A 52 PERCENT RATE OF VOODOO PRACTITIONERS, ACCORDING TO A 2012 LOCAL NEWS ARTICLE
BURKINA FASO A 2007 ARTICLE IN THE GERMAN SPIEGEL NEWSPAPER NOTED THAT 40 PERCENT OF PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE STILL PRACTICE ANIMIST RELIGIONS SUCH AS VOODOO
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LIVING ON A SPACE STATION HOW CRAZY IS IT TO GET ON WITH THE MUNDANE CHORES OF DAY-TO-DAY LIFE ON A SPACE STATION? CHRIS HADFIELD OF CANADIAN SPACE AGENCY SPENT FIVE MONTHS ABOARD ISS AND SPENT ALMOST AS MUCH TIME GETTING BACK TO LIFE ON EARTH. RACHEL SULLIVAN GETS US A FIRST HAND ACCOUNT
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PHOTO: STS-116 SHUTTLE CREW/ NASA
LIFE IN SPACE
THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION IS THE LARGEST HUMAN-MADE OBJECT EVER TO ORBIT THE EARTH. ASTRONAUT CHRIS HADFIELD LIVED ABOARD THIS FOR FIVE MONTHS
41 JULY 2014
PHOTO: NASA
Every movement is controlled and precise, a zero gravity version of tai chi. A small hatch opens very slowly as a single figure, Chris Hadfield, eases himself out in measured movement from the round aperture. Leaving the hatch, and holding onto the space station by a single hand, all movement ceases, except that of Earth, spinning past the spaceman at eight kilometres per second, 250 kilometres below. “It is an incredible and inexpressible feeling,” he says, describing his first spacewalk from the International Space Station (ISS), in 2013. “To be suspended between our world and the universe alone — a phenomenally humbling experience that is also utterly magnificent. Everything pales compared with floating weightless in the universe,” he recalls.
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FLIGHT ENGINEER CHRIS HADFIELD OF THE CANADIAN SPACE AGENCY CONDUCTS A "FIT CHECK" DRESS REHEARSAL INSIDE THE SOYUZ TMA-07M SPACECRAFT IN 2012
LIFE IN SPACE
ecently retired, Hadfield is one of the most famous astronauts in the world right now. A member of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), he was commander of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013, the highlight of a long and illustrious career as an astronaut, which came at a time when interest in the space station had never been higher. Until recently, what has happened in space, has tended to stay in space. But this time was different. While onboard the ISS, Hadfield found fame thanks to an engaging series of YouTube video clips, which helped to demonstrate how, when released from the confines of gravity, even the most everyday tasks soon becomes compelling viewing. Among dozens of other insights into daily life in space, millions of viewers watched Hadfield cut his nails (over an air vent to stop the stray clippings being later inhaled), and demonstrated that water wrung out of a towel clings to the user’s hands. And, memorably, he helped prove that in space, tears don’t fall — they pool in an ever expanding jellyfish-like blob. For the space worker, these were the geeky intrigues of
life in space that just needed sharing. “I just thought if I found those things really neat, others might too,” he tells Discovery Channel Magazine over the phone from his home in Canada. Hadfield’s compelling online commentary about life in space then reached its crescendo, with his charming rendition of David Bowie’s astro-inspired song, Space Oddity. It was appropriately filmed, as Bowie famously observed in the song, while Hadfield was still “floating in a most peculiar way”, suspended high above our mortal coil, strumming his beloved Yamaha FG 18 guitar, the same instrument he had in tow while hitch-hiking through Europe as a 17-year-old. The clip was released on YouTube the evening before he was due to part ways with the ISS, in May 2013. By the time his Soyuz craft had touched down in Kazakhstan a few hours later, the song, featuring Hadfield’s distinctively non rock and roll voice, had already been downloaded seven million times — a figure that has since tripled and is close to quadrupling. Not only did it help make a classic spaceinspired song relevant again to a new generation, but 43 JULY 2014
RUSSIA 1 ZVEDA SERVICE MODULE 2 MULTIPURPOSE LABORATORY MODULE 3 ZARYA CONTROL MODULE 4 DOCKING PORT
ISS CONFIGURATION
CANADA 5 CANADAARM2 MOBILE SERVICING MODULE
u
A WALK THROUGH THE SPACE STATION
1
2
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5 6
EUROPEAN MODULES (ESA) w TRANQUILITY MODULE e CUPOLA r COLOMBUS LABORATORY
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INTEGRATED CONTROL PANEL LIGHTING CONTROL PANEL VONZDUKH CONTROL PANEL SOLID FUEL OXYGEN GENERATORS (SFOG) GALLEY TABLE CREW SLEEP COMPARTMENT CAMERA AIRFLOW VENT WASTE MANAGEMENT COMPARTMENT SOYUZ AND PROGRESS DOCKING PORT TREADMILL AND VIBRATION ISOLATION SYSTEM VELA ERGOMETRE BODY MASS MEASUREMENT CAUTION AND WARNING PANEL, CLOCK AND MONITORS NADIR DOCKING PORT FORWARD DOCKING PORT ZENITH DOCKING PORT VENTILATION SCREEN COMMUNICATIONS PANEL TORU RENDEZVOUS CONTROL STATION
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SPACE SHUTTLE Lifetime: 133 successful launches; two failed launches Status: Retired; July 21, 2011 First Orbital Launch: Columbia; April 12, 1981
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SOYUZ Lifetime: Up to six months docked to station; Status: In service, one is onboard the ISS at all times First Manned Launch: April 23, 1967
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PROGRESS AUTOMATED CYGNUS DRAGON H-II TRANSFER TRANSFER VEHICLE VEHICLE (HTV) Lifetime: Lifetime: Lifetime: (ATV) Lifetime: Unmanned resupply First commercially built Unmanned resupply Lifetime: Unmanned cargo spacecraft, aka and operated spacecraft; can spacecraft; can last up to freighter with 3 or 4 flights Carries both bulk liquids and Kounotori, the "White Stork" be manned or robot-operated one week to two years per year relatively fragile freight Status: Status: Status: Status: Status: In service In service In service In service In service, but closing in 2015 First Launch: First Launch: First Launch: First Launch: First Launch: September 10, 2009 January 20, 1978 December 8, 2010 September 18, 2013 March 9, 2008
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LIFE IN SPACE
the whirlwind of media that followed him also created global interest, not just in Hadfield, but in the space programme too.
HOT ROCKETS
By any measure, space has been big news in recent times. As the Curiosity Rover continues to beam back intriguing images from its ongoing search for signs of life on Mars, plans are being fast-tracked to establish a human settlement on the Red Planet. Despite the risks, there have been no shortage of people eager to follow in Curiosity’s tracks: when private organisation Mars One called for volunteers to make the one-way trip to the colony that it plans to establish in 2023, more than 200,000 people applied. While NASA
BUGGING OUT It's an arachnophobe's delight in space — there are no creepy crawlies. “On the ISS you see little particles of dust that your mind automatically identifies as insects,” Hadfield says. “But there are zero insects which is a really strange feeling, because insects like ants are perfectly designed for life without gravity.” There are some insect experiments planned in the near future. “Small animals that reproduce quickly allow scientists to measure how balance and other things are affected in multiple generations. It’s a good place to predict the effect on humans.”
MOISTURE’S STRANGE BEHAVIOUR IN THE ABSENCE OF SURFACE TENSION MEANS THAT BACTERIAL AND MOULD GROWTH BECOMES A CONSTANT ISSUE. has publicly said little so far about the Mars One venture, the space agency also has its own plans to send astronauts to Mars within the next 20 years. In the meantime, the ISS has a lot more to teach people about the challenges of living in space. Arguably humankind’s greatest technical achievement, the US $100 billion outpost has been operational for
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"FAR ABOVE THE WORLD, PLANET EARTH IS BLUE" SANG DAVIE BOWIE IN HIS 1969 HIT SPACE ODDITY. OVER 44 YEARS LATER, ASTRONAUT CHRIS HADFIELD'S YOUTUBE VIDEO VERSION (RIGHT) OF THE SONG HAS GARNERED OVER 22 MILLION HITS
LIFE IN SPACE
15 years and continuously populated since November 2000. Hurtling through space at more than 28,000 kilometres per hour, it is maintained by a rotating crew of six astronauts and
solutions. “The Russians wallpaper the walls with Velcro,” Hadfield notes. “In the US section, they’re concerned about the flammability of having too much cloth around, so there’s a limited amount of Velcro. But it’s still incredibly useful for keeping things under control.”
PHOTOS: USGS EROS DATA CENTER (RICHAT STRUCTURE); NASA (CHRIS HADFIELD)
BEST TRIP AROUND
cosmonauts from the US, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan. Four times the size of the now-defunct Soviet and Russian space station Mir, which operated from 1986 to 2001, the ISS — at 109 metres in length — is the largest space lab ever built, and although almost weightless in space, its mass is impressive, at around 420 tons. Yet despite the cutting edge technology that has gone into its creation, life “on station” constantly throws up curious new challenges. Moisture’s strange behaviour in the absence of surface tension means that bacterial and mould growth becomes a constant issue. Flames burn spherically. And then there is ‘stiction’, a term that astronauts have coined to describe the way fragile materials stick together when there is no gravity to pull them apart. Dust, skin and other detritus shed by astronauts doesn’t simply fall to the floor – instead it floats around until being sucked into an air filter, or inhaled. Needless to say, space station residents devote considerable time each day to mundane cleaning chores, and a considerable amount of time to tracking down wayward objects. Different nationalities come up with different living
While the trip to the ISS can be made in less than six hours — faster than flying via aeroplane from New York to London — for astronauts like Hadfield getting onto the Space Station is the journey of a lifetime. After blitzing test pilot training in the 1980s, Hadfield was selected by the CSA in 1992. Based at NASA, he oversaw 25 Shuttle launches and directed operations of Russia’s Star City. He was also chief of robotics at NASA and chief of International Space Station operations prior to his mission as Commander of the ISS. In between roles, he commanded NEEMO 14, a NASA undersea mission to simulate exploration missions to the surface of asteroids, moons and Mars in order to gain a better understanding of how astronaut crews interact with equipment including advanced spacesuits, a lander, a rover and robotic arms. In Canada’s Pavilion Lake, he was also part of a team to study microbialites, structures formed by aquatic micro-organisms that were very common for about two billion years of Earth's early history. The Pavilion Lake microbialites provide insight into the biogeochemical processes that were active on our young planet, and potentially on other planets such as Mars. While undersea missions
GRAVITY FACT CHECK Moviegoers held their breath when medical engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) made her maiden voyage to space with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) in the 2013 sci-fi hit film Gravity. Disaster strikes when they are hit by debris from an exploding satellite, with no way home, and oxygen running out rapidly. The film has been praised for its accurate portrayal of life in space, winning seven Oscars including Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. But even so, the filmmakers had to take some artistic licence. While being hit by debris is certainly a risk for the space station or for any astronaut on a spacewalk, the debris field depicted in the film would be highly unlikely to take out a communication satellite. According to former astronaut Garrett Reisman there is no way to go hopping from one spacecraft or space station to another so easily. The Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong-1 are also far too distant from one another to travel between them and are in different orbits and at different altitudes. If you want to go somewhere in space, simply pointing your vessel in the right direction isn’t enough – it takes careful planning and a lot of energy to get there, and a fire extinguisher and landing jets wouldn’t provide enough firepower for the job. Also in space, an object’s speed depends on its altitude, with objects orbiting faster at lower altitudes because of the gravitational pull of the earth. This makes travel between objects very difficult because any change in speed causes a change in altitude from that of the object you’re trying to reach. Bodies don’t freeze instantly when exposed to space, although their fate may actually be worse. Space is a vacuum with its low pressure forcing air out of the lungs with nothing to breathe in again causing unconsciousness within 12 seconds and then suffocation. Finally, at the speed George Clooney tumbled past Sandra Bullock’s character, she would have been unable to catch him, but once caught, she could have simply pulled him back to the space station by his tether because he was weightless, not requiring any heroic self sacrifice.
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may seem a long way from space, Hadfield says that astronauts never stop training and expanding their skillset in a raft of new areas, which will in turn help them in their future work in space. “We think it would be more practical to train astronauts in geological techniques than to ask geologists to become astronauts,” he comments. “You travel all around the world together, and training can take place at the bottom of the ocean or on an arctic survival mission.”
ONE THING THAT TAKES SOME GETTING USED TO IS DIGESTION. “IF YOU BURP IN SPACE YOU THROW UP INSTEAD.” WANT TO KNOW HOW IT FEELS? “TRY TO BURP WHILE STANDING ON YOUR HEAD”. A crew is selected a long time before they fly, and selection is based upon a detailed set of characteristics, he explains. “First, the right people are chosen by the lengthy astronaut selection process, and then a subset of those is chosen. They are not random people flung together.” Then once a specific mission has been decided upon, the astronauts move into a high gear towards their date with space — mastering and adapting to the demands of the tasks that they will need to complete while onboard. One of the main considerations is obviously 48 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
preparing to work in an entirely different physical state to the one we live in on Earth. “Weightlessness can’t be simulated accurately, so once the tasks for a mission have been decided, astronauts spend hundreds of hours practicing tasks in the pool,” he says. This further ensures that they are ready to float into action as soon as they arrive on station. “When I arrived, the place felt very familiar,” Hadfield remembers. “I knew the people, understood the work, and it all felt familiar,” which he says was a tribute to the accuracy of the simulations he’d worked with back home on Earth. Despite the sense of familiarity, any journey still involves adjustments. On board the Space Station, the sun rises and sets 16 times a day, meaning that astronauts experience a different cycle of day and night. Hadfield says while this was an odd feeling, it is probably easier to deal with than for people living in polar regions of the globe, who experience prolonged days or nights, depending on the season. However, those onboard do take steps to create a sense of normalcy to daily life on station. “At bedtime, we turn the lights off, and all goes quiet,” he says. “We also have regular rituals such as having breakfast and lunch together. Even so, time passes so quickly that it always seems to be Monday or Friday,” he laughs. “Five months went by very quickly.” One thing that takes some getting used to is digestion. “The initial transition is hard,” Hadfield recalls. “You can’t burp without gravity; if you burp in space, you throw up instead.” If you want to know how it feels, he suggests, try to burp while standing on your head.
Relieving yourself also takes practice. “Cues to relieving yourself on Earth are driven by weight, for example, the weight of urine in the bladder. But in space, it’s more about pressure. And it takes a week or two to adjust.
PAINS OF RETURNING
Long-duration spaceflight has a considerable impact on astronauts’ bodies. Spacerelated wear and tear can include bone and muscle loss, blurred vision, stuffy sinuses, decreased cardiovascular function and sensory motor performance. The lack of downward force on their bodies means they can also grow up to three percent taller while on station. To minimise these effects, and to reduce their recovery time on Earth (which takes at least a day for every day spent in orbit), astronauts need to do hours of load-bearing exercises each day, in order to maintain muscle tone and bone density. According to his book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, after five months on the ISS, readjusting to life on Earth proved surprisingly hard for Hadfield. “After five months in space, my body hadn’t just adapted to zero gravity, it had developed a whole new set of habits.” Walking on feet grown unaccustomed to bearing weight was almost like walking on hot coals, while sitting was little better. His elongated spine recompressed, causing constant lower back pain, while his heart struggled to pump blood to his head when he stood up, causing ongoing vertigo, nausea and fatigue. While Hadfield is philosophical about such relative suffering, NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos are eager to learn more about the effects of
TOP IF THE ISS WERE A SCHOOL, THIS SCENE IN THE UNITY NODE WOULD BE OF THE TEACHERS' LOUNGE. SIX EXPEDITION 35 CREW MEMBERS, INCLUDING HADFIELD (FAR RIGHT) TAKE A BRIEF MOMENT TO "LOUNGE" ABOVE ANOTHER WAY TO CREATE NORMALCY IN SPACE IS TO KEEP EATING; BUT BEWARE, DIGESTION CAN TAKE SOME TIME TO MASTER PROPERLY
LIFE IN SPACE
SPACE BY NUMBERS
US$100 BILLION AT A COST OF ROUGHLY US$100 BILLION, THE ISS IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE SINGLE OBJECT EVER BUILT. FOR REFERENCE, THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER COST SLIGHTLY MORE THAN US$6 BILLION
16X OVER 16 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE HAVE SUMMITED MOUNT EVEREST THAN HAVE BEEN TO THE ISS (3,500 PEOPLE COMPARED TO SOME 211)
3 GREAT SONGS RATHER THAN AN ALARM CLOCK, THE CREW IS WOKEN BY A DIFFERENT SONG EACH MORNING, OFTEN CHOSEN BY A LOVED ONE DOWN ON EARTH. SONGS HAVE INCLUDED MACHO MAN BY THE VILLAGE PEOPLE, THE THEME TUNE FROM WALLACE AND GROMIT, AND MUSE’S SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE.
10,000:1
IT COSTS US$10,000 FOR EVERY POUND OF PAYLOAD SENT INTO ORBIT
PHOTOS: NASA
45 MINUTES
long duration space flight on human bodies, announcing in February 2014 that they will be sending two crew members to the space station on a one-year mission starting in late 2015. The data that they collect will help the next generation of space exploration. “This will build on the rich experience of long-duration flights, including four flights of a year or more conducted by our Russian colleagues on the Mir station,” explains Dr Michael Barratt, program manager for NASA's Human Research Program. “We have progressed considerably in our understanding of the human physiology in space and in countermeasures to preserve bone, muscle and fitness since then.”
MORE THAN A TIN CAN
Along with regularly having to unblock the toilet and perform other maintenance activities, each day’s work for ISS astronauts involves acting as human guinea pigs — conducting scientific experiments for a range of government agencies, businesses and non-profits. The results of their efforts have in turn made a very real difference to people’s lives back on Earth. Due to the fact that virulence and antibiotic resistance of microbial life forms increases in space (because microgravity appears to alter the way genes are expressed), the ISS is the perfect place to trial new approaches to creating vaccines. New treatments
TIME IT TAKES JUST TO PUT ON THE SPACESUIT THAT ALLOWS AN ASTRONAUT TO EXIT THE ISS AND PERFORM A SPACEWALK OUTSIDE THE CRAFT, ALSO KNOWN AS EVA (EXTRAVEHICULAR ACTIVITY). TO ADAPT TO THE LOWER PRESSURE MAINTAINED IN THE SUIT, AN ASTRONAUT MUST ALSO SPEND OVER AN HOUR BREATHING PURE OXYGEN. WANT TO TALK LIKE ONE OF THE PROS? PUTTING THE SUIT ON IS CALLED “DONNING”, WHILE REMOVING IT IS CALLED “DOFFING”.
8:56 THE RECORD FOR LONGEST EVA WAS SNAGGED IN 2001, BY NASA ASTRONAUTS SUSAN J. HELMS AND JAMES S. VOSS, WHO TODDLED AROUND SPACE FOR EIGHT HOURS AND 56 MINUTES.
1969 A STUDY FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BERKLEY CALLED “INTESTINAL HYDROGEN AND METHANE OF MEN FED SPACE DIET" WAS RELEASED IN '69. DURING NASA’S GEMINI PROGRAMME, ASTRONAUTS WHO ATE FOOD PREPARED FOR THAT MISSION PASSED FAR MORE GAS THAN THOSE WHO ATE BLAND FOOD. THE FEAR WAS THAT METHANE, A FLAMMABLE GAS THAT MAKES UP FARTS, MIGHT BUILD UP IN THE CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT AND HEIGHTEN THE RISK OF FIRE. SILENT BUT DEADLY, INDEED. 49 JULY 2014
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PHOTO: NASA
LIFE IN SPACE
THE DOCKED KOUNOTORI2 H-II TRANSFER VEHICLE (HTV-2) AND PART OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION, ARE CAPTURED BY AN ONBOARD CREW MEMBER AS THEY ORBIT ABOVE EASTERN CANADA
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for prostate cancer use microencapsulation technology tested on the station; while ISS-grown, high quality protein crystals have been demonstrated to combat diseases such as muscular dystrophy. Climate change, disaster monitoring and urban growth on Earth are also monitored from the station, which performs a lap of our planet every 90 minutes. Balance studies done on astronauts are being used to help predict the risk of falls in the elderly, while the technology behind the Canadian robotic arm, known as Canadarm, that first helped assemble and now services and maintains the station is being used to perform robotic surgery with pinpoint accuracy.
“LIFE ON THE ISS HAS A MISREPRESENTED AIR OF TRANQUILLITY,” SAYS HADFIELD. “WITH 200 ONGOING EXPERIMENTS AND SIX MISSION CONTROLS IN CONSTANT CONTACT, IT’S A BUSY PLACE”. Put simply, while life may appear calm and carefree, it is definitely busy up there. “Life on the ISS has a misrepresented air of tranquillity,” says Hadfield. “With 200 ongoing experiments and six mission controls in constant contact, it’s a busy place.” It is also about to become the coldest place in the universe. An ‘atomic 52 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
refrigerator’ which is set for launch in 2016 will cool an area of the ISS to one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero. All the thermal activity of atoms theoretically stops, while our concepts of solid, liquid and gas become irrelevant. Researchers hope that the super-chilled experiment will deliver us new insights into quantum theory, amongst others. Another planned addition to the ISS program is a Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS), which will detect and locate lightning above the tropics. Scheduled to launch in February 2016, the LIS hardware will look farther towards Earth's poles than existing sensors, and supply real-time information over data-sparse regions, such as oceans, to support weather forecasting and warning systems.
ISS, EXPUNGE The manifold successes and insights provided by the ISS program have resulted in several extensions to its life, which has now been extended until 2024. However, like the EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED rubbish that is regularly jettisoned from While Hadfield is one of the the station to burn up spectacularly on lucky few human beings to re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, evenhave spent time in space, tually the ISS will outlive its usefulness he emphasises that he was and come to a fiery end. The parts that just one part of a very large are too big to burn up will most likely team of equally committed splash down somewhere in the colleagues, both in space South Pacific, marking the most and on the ground; people expensive act of deliberate who work, train, travel and destruction in human socialise together for years. history. The ongoing bonding process also means that when the unexpected occurs, everyone comes together as one to deal with any problems. “It’s really important, because when dealing with something as complex and uncertain as leaving Earth, you don’t want there to be any mistakes,” he says. Even during incidents such as Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano’s helmet flooding during a space walk in July 2013, nearly drowning him, the response of other astronauts — and the support team at Mission Control — was not one of shock, but
LIFE IN SPACE
rather, how could this be fixed and made right. NASA has since decided to equip its helmets with snorkels, should a similar cooling system malfunction occur again.
PHOTOS: NASA; SPL/CLICK PHOTOS (TARDIGRADE)
EXPERIMENTS SUCH AS ISS-GROWN HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN CRYSTALS HAVE BEEN DEMONSTRATED TO COMBAT DISEASES SUCH AS MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY.
ABOVE "FOR ME, EVERYTHING PALES COMPARED WITH FLOATING WEIGHTLESS IN THE UNIVERSE” SAYS HADFIELD. RIGHT LIFE ON THE ISS DOES TAKE SOME GETTING USED TO, FOR EXAMPLE THE LACK OF INSECTS ROAMING FREE LEFT THE INCREDIBLE VIEWS AT ALL TIMES OF THE DAY AND NIGHT, SUCH AS SOUTH KOREA ALL LIT UP
“You don’t want a shocked astronaut onboard,” Hadfield laughs. The astronaut feels that the Oscar-winning film Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, strayed most into fiction in the moments when the astronauts were portrayed as being overwhelmed by their situation, compounding the disaster that befell them. Instead, space training teaches you to stay in the zone, despite the obstacles. “I’ve been on three flights, with three different crews, and there has never been an emotional blowup,” he says. “Plenty of debate and discussion, yes, but all based on rational content and developing solutions.” Travelling off the planet with other people also leaves you with a new understanding of teamwork, he says. “The key to a successful team is for each member to have a deep reserve of capability,” says Hadfield. “And to be able to put others’ concerns ahead of your own.” It is advice, learned while floating in space, that he feels applies equally to life on Earth. 53 JULY 2014
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
THE HOSTAGE ORDEAL HOW DOES A HOSTAGE KEEP HOPE ALIVE AND COPE WITH CAPTIVITY WHICH IS ACCOMPANIED BY VIOLENCE? AND IF AND WHEN HE WALKS FREE, WHAT DOES LIFE SEEM LIKE? CHRIS WRIGHT MEETS ONE SUCH HERO, JOHN MCCARTHY, AND RECOUNTS THE TALES OF OTHERS 54 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
TAKEN HOSTAGE
JOHN MCCARTHY BRITISH JOURNALIST TAKEN HOSTAGE IN LEBANONIN 1986
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Discovery Channel Magazine in a café in Teddington, just outside London. “And I was looking across this valley and thinking, how weird that some of those cows are big, but some are really small. I wonder what special breed of cows they’ve got to make them really small? “And then something in my brain went: no, no, no, they’re just further away! They’re not all on this cliff in front of you. Some are 300 yards away and some are half a mile away.” This is what happens to your mind when you never see anything that is more than six feet away for half a decade. And as he understood this, he came to another realisation. “Christ! I’ve been driving a f…ing car!”
When John McCarthy was released from five and a half years of captivity as a hostage in Lebanon; most of it spent chained to a wall, there was a problem: he no longer had any depth perception. When he was driven through the Bekka Valley, the cliffs on either side of the car, to him, seemed to be going thousands of feet straight up in the air. t started as he was handed over by his kidnappers to Syrian military intelligence and was driven to Damascus through Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in August 1991. To him, the cliffs on either side of the car seemed to be going thousands of feet straight up in the air. “Then two or three weeks later, I was with some friends in Wales,” he tells
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PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (TOP LEFT); CORBIS (OPPOSITE)
TURNING INWARDS
Hostages face misery on an unimaginable scale. The location might vary: McCarthy and his fellow Lebanon hostages in anonymous cells and rooms, Colombia FARC hostages like Ingrid Betancourt in jungle cages living in fear of anacondas, famed ship captain Richard Phillips in a pitching lifeboat off the Somali coast. But what they have in common is the fact that they have committed no crime, and have absolutely no idea of when their ordeal might end — or if they will survive it. Ultimately, all have to deal with that same sense of injustice and incredible uncertainty.
TAKEN HOSTAGE
A COMBATANT OF THE LEBANESE FRONT CLOSE TO THE GREEN LINE IN BEIRUT DURING THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR OPPOSITE DURING JOURNALIST JOHN MCCARTHY'S FIVE AND A HALF YEAR IMPRISONMENT IN LEBANON, A CANDLE BURNS IN THE HOPE OF HIS RELEASE
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Yet those who survive these ordeals tend to come out with a profound sense of their own ability to survive and overcome. Hostage literature is a canon in its own right, and it includes some of the most extraordinary writing you are ever likely to read, because those who have written it have had to confront demons within themselves that most of us will mercifully never have to acknowledge. “I am still and always will be amazed at the qualities men find in themselves when they have only themselves in which to find a source of life,” writes Brian Keenan, a Lebanon hostage who spent much of his incarceration sharing a cell with McCarthy, in his quite incredible book An Evil Cradling. “I had seen John McCarthy turn from someone who was frightened, as we all were, into someone who was unafraid and totally committed to life. In that long time of captivity, I had also come to know all the many people that were in me.” Or consider this, by Ingrid Betancourt, who had been preparing to contest an election in Colombia when she was taken by FARC, a revolutionary group believed to have kidnapped almost 7,000 people over a 10-year period, in February 2002. Having just failed in an attempt to escape and knowing she will now be punished, she writes: “I understood that I had gone beyond fear, and I murmured, ‘There are things that are more important than life.’ My rage had left me, giving way to an extreme coldness. The alchemy taking place inside me, imperceptible from the outside, substituted the rigidity of my muscles with a bodily strength that would prepare me to ward off the blow of adversity. This was not
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LEBANESE CIVIL WAR In April 1975, a group of Phalangist gunmen — retaliating over an assassination attempt on their leader — ambushed a bus in the Ayn-al-Rummanah district of Lebanon's capital, Beirut, killing 27 of its mainly Palestinian passengers. This triggered the start of a 16-year bloody civil war in the multisectarian country, resulting in over 100,000 deaths and an equal number of displaced people. Against this backdrop, 96 foreign hostages from 21 nations were taken hostage.
resignation, far from it, nor was it a headlong flight. I observed myself from within, measuring my strength and resistance not according to my ability to fight back but rather to submit to those blows, like a ship that is battered by the tides yet will not sink.” Taken as bargaining chips, dehumanised and isolated, deprived of communication and of basic decency and liberty, the hostage has to adapt to a reduced life. All of
them deal with it in different ways, but all of them come out certainly changed.
LIFE IN CHAINS
John McCarthy was a journalist, a producer for WTN, who had spent a month in Beirut when he was ordered by his employers to fly home for his own safety. He was on his way to the airport to do exactly that when he was taken in April 1986, a fresh-faced 29-yearold with a lot to enjoy in life:
ABOVE WHILE THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR RAGED FROM 1975 TO 1991 — AND HOSTAGES CONTINUED TO BE TAKEN — ITS CAPITAL BEIRUT, WAS ESSENTIALLY DIVIDED INTO TWO CAMPS: THE MUSLIM WEST PART AND THE CHRISTIAN EAST PART. MUCH OF THE CITY WAS DEVASTATED BY THE CONSTANT BOMBING, FORCING MANY INHABITANTS TO FLEE, SOME PERMANENTLY
TAKEN HOSTAGE
ending between McCarthy and Morrell gave the story particular momentum in the tabloid press, and the media hounded them when McCarthy finally got out. The fairytale never happened: they became a couple again, but separated in 1994. He subsequently married and had a daughter, but Morrell never settled nor had children.
PHOTO: CORBIS
“TAKEN AS BARGAINING CHIPS, DEHUMANISED AND ISOLATED, DEPRIVED OF COMMUNICATION AND BASIC DECENCY, HOSTAGES HAVE TO ADAPT TO A REDUCED LIFE. ALL OF THEM DEAL WITH IT IN DIFFERENT WAYS, BUT THEY ALL COME OUT CHANGED”.
a beautiful girlfriend, Jill Morrell, whom he had planned to marry, and the beginnings of a successful career. Neither he nor Jill could ever have imagined the duration and depth of his suffering. He would spend five and a half years in chains, denied any communication with the outside world, even when his mother was dying in cruel unawareness of her son’s fate. He had to find that out more than a year later when he
was transferred to share a cell with American hostages, who had had access to a radio. He was beaten, and transferred between cells in truly hellish circumstances, tied and taped and mummified in a scalding airless metal box beneath a truck for hours at a time. He had a gun held to his head, was threatened frequently with execution, and was given false hope of release time and again. During his captivity, thanks to the tireless work of Jill
Morrell and, subsequently, Brian Keenan’s description of their ordeal when Keenan was released before him in 1990, McCarthy became a celebrity in the UK despite the fact that almost nobody had ever heard of him when he was taken. The Friends of John McCarthy, as his lobby group became known, numbered tens of thousands of people fighting for someone they had never met and didn’t even know for sure to be alive. The prospect of a fairytale
What did the idea of freedom mean to him during his captivity?“I suppose the obvious thought of freedom was the ability to stand up and walk out of a room,” he says. He never had this in his five and a half years, not once. No prison yard for daily exercise, nor any of the other relative luxuries afforded to western prisoners, not least a trial or even a crime to warrant having one in the first place. “But in terms of what I was going to do, the main thing was getting back to my life, and hoping I could pick it up. “I had no idea what had happened to my then-
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“I HAD OBVIOUSLY CHANGED. I HAD EXPERIENCED THE TERROR OF BEING CAPTIVE, CHAINEDUP, KEPT UNDERGROUND IN VARIOUS PLACES AND BEING PHYSICALLY ABUSED, BUT ALL OF THAT PROBABLY CHANGED ME FOR THE BETTER” From his own perspective, he felt he was weathering his captivity quite well, and could even perceive advantages in it. “I had obviously changed, because I had experienced the terror of being captive and chained up and kept underground in various places
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and being physically abused, but that had probably changed me for the good in terms of being a journalist,” he says. “I had experienced rather more than I had as a happy middle class boy from the Home Counties. I had suddenly seen how other people live. Or those in Lebanon, and Palestinians in refugee camps because of a month reporting on the ground before his kidnapping; suddenly it made sense. It meant I could approach what their life was like rather than just thinking: that looks terrible. I felt an empathy with them.” So the big question was how the rest of the world would receive him. And when freedom did come, how realistic was it for him to pick up where he had left off?
BACK TO REALITY
“When I came out, I thought, right: I’ve dealt with the hostage thing. And, to a large degree, I suppose I had. I had become, not used to it, but able to cope with it, and in a strange sense there was an advantage to being held longer, because one had to fight one’s battles with oneself, and also with the people holding us. Having found the strength from within, and with in particular Brian Keenan the strength to stand up to the guards — occasionally going on hunger strike, those sorts of things — put one in a different realm of experience. I could still be terrified in those experiences, but I felt I had dealt with it: dealt with myself, dealt with the environment and all the people in it," he says. “But coming out…. It obviously wasn’t that simple.” This is something we perhaps don’t appreciate for freed hostages: that being dropped back into the real world can be just as terrifying as the captivity that preceded it. Betancourt, for example, a
woman whose six-year jungle ordeal involved a personal reduction so extreme that she was eventually told to answer not to her own name but to a number, came back to a world in which her beloved father had died. She had found this out from a scrap of newspaper that came into the camp wrapped around a cabbage. Her children had grown up and her husband’s first words to her were: “Can I still live in your apartment?” She and fellow former hostages still compare notes on their near-identical nightmares: being trapped in a building, having to fight their way out, or finding themselves panicked by being on a packed train carriage. Paul and Rachel Chandler, a couple who were sailing in the Seychelles before being kidnapped by Somali pirates and held hostage in Somalia for a year while their captors tried to extort millions of dollars they simply didn’t have from their family, also found freedom daunting and strange. Rachel’s diary says: “I’m sad when reminded that our lives will never be the same again. What has happened to us is so momentous we will always be ‘Paul and Rachel Chandler, ex-hostages’.” Yet they found themselves bonded to anyone who had suffered any sort of captivity. They were glued to the news when the Chilean miners emerged from their coal-mine tomb in 2010. And Judith Tebbutt, another Somali hostage, who saw her husband David shot dead when gunmen stormed their bungalow in Kenya in 2011 and then spent 192 days of nearstarvation in Somalia while her family were extorted for a ransom, wrote this upon her freedom: “To the pirates I had been one sort of commodity. Now, my life seemed to be tending towards a kind of public
relations narrative. I felt on show, and I didn’t want to be.” On her flight home to England she fell asleep and woke in a panic, “absolutely sure that my creaky bedframe was being kicked in order to rouse me for one more move, to another pirate compound.” In fact the plane had just hit turbulence. “But I was shaken, feeling that I had been served an unsettling notice of how the mental vestiges of captivity might dog my life for a while to come.”
THE NEW NORMAL
For McCarthy, his return home brought more than just his depth perception handicap. He had bigger problems — newfound fame and press attention. In this, he was helped enormously by Keenan, who had spent a year dealing with exactly the same thing and had begun to learn to accept it. McCarthy asked him: what is it, who do people think I am? Keenan told
BRIAN KEENAN
him: “We have been somewhere nobody could imagine: terrifying, chained up by Middle East terrorists, in this alien environment, terrified, abused physically. Nobody knows what that’s like. But we’re normal blokes. Ordinary little blokes. And we’ve survived. So people look at us and think: that’s my mate. That’s my boyfriend, or my son, or my uncle, or my colleague. So we’re everyman, which we are, because we are ordinary people."
PHOTOS: CORBIS (TOP LEFT); GETTY IMAGES (OPPOSITE)
girlfriend Jill Morrell. And what about going back to work? In the last year of captivity we had a radio, and I heard about the internet. Particularly in our world as journalists, communications and satellite television had moved into a totally different orbit. And I thought: I’m going to be so far behind I won’t be able to catch up, and they won’t be able to employ me.” That concerned him, but his chief ambition was nothing more than normality. “The main thing was to ignore the last five years and pick up where I left off: doing quite well at work, engaged to a beautiful woman, everything happy, lovely mum and dad and brother at home.”
TAKEN HOSTAGE COVER WRESTLING STORY
WALKING STRAIGHT When John McCarthy met the daughter of still-imprisoned Terry Anderson, Sulome, just after his release, he tried to take her for a walk across a paddock to see some horses while they chatted. It meant crossing a patch of slightly uneven ground.“I was suddenly thinking: this isn’t flat. What’s all this about? All I had done was walk on concrete. That's all I'd been used to, and now I’m wearing shoes, which I also hadn’t done for five years, and I was terrified I was going to fall over. It was like walking on the moon."
HEZBOLLAH'S AUTOMATIC WEAPONS REST IN FRONT OF A MURAL OF THE IRANIAN FLAG IN A BUILDING ACROSS THE GREEN LINE WHICH DIVIDED EAST AND WEST BEIRUT DURING THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR LEFT NORTHERN IRELAND-BORN BRIAN KEENAN, WHO SPENT FOUR YEARS IN CAPTIVITY AS A HOSTAGE IN BEIRUT IN THE 1980S ALONGSIDE JOHN MCCARTHY 61 JULY 2014
MAN WITHOUT A GUN GIANDOMENICO PICCO
“It’s sort of like they’re looking at you and they think they know you, and they think: we could have got through that. I can understand that.” As for the pressure on him and Morrell, he says: “For me, it felt like I was being hunted again. There were photographers everywhere and I felt uncomfortable about it. Not a sense of being in danger, just somewhat vulnerable.” But he doesn’t blame this intrusion for the fact that their relationship didn’t last. “We lived together for another two or three years and then ended it amicably, but that became normal, because we were back in the real world, rather than as a celebrity couple,” he says. “Whether it’s because of what happened or because, like lots of relationships, they just don’t work out over the years, I don’t know," he says.
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (TOP LEFT); CORBIS (RIGHT)
COMPLEX PSYCHOLOGY
If you read Some Other Rainbow, the book McCarthy wrote with Jill Morrell after his release, you will find no mention of an Italian called Gi andomenico Picco, who was undersecretary general at the United Nations during McCarthy’s captivity. Today, McCarthy considers this “a tragic, criminal omission, because I didn’t realise he brokered the deal that put everything in place so that we did come out.” Picco’s UN life, lived largely behind the scenes less as a diplomat than as a commando, was extraordinary. He is credited with broker-ing the peace that ended the Iran-Iraq war, and from that experience decided that the key to the release of the hostages was to start in Tehran. He shuttled between there, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Washington, London, Damascus, Beirut and countless other places besides, attempting to bring the great many interested parties to some sort of common ground. This was tortuous. “But what I didn’t realise was the day I was handed over, the day I was looking at those cliffs in the Bekaa Valley, he was walking out at night onto the streets of West Beirut. He walked out of the Iranian embassy, turned left, and turned right, as per prior agreement — to be kidnapped. The gang that had held me picked him up and took him and quizzed him.” He would do this every time a hostage was released, in order to discuss with them the next steps. Right, McCarthy’s out, what’s the next thing? “And every time, he was completely alone. He never saw them. Sometimes they’d make 62 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
What’s particularly striking about McCarthy’s ordeal is that, once freed, he turned what he’d learned from it into his life’s direction. Now a successful broadcaster in his own right, rather than “the ex-hostage”, he spends the bulk of his time covering the Middle East. In 2012 he wrote a new book, his fifth, called You Can’t Hide the Sun. This book tells the story of the Palestinians in Israel. That is, not the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza but the Arabic people who have always lived within what today is Israel. In it, he very much takes their side. McCarthy was imprisoned and often beaten by Arabs, who worked for Iranbacked Hezbollah but who likely included a number of Palestinians and who certainly in some measure justified their hostage-taking through the treatment of Palestinians. Surely nobody would have been more justified in hating
TAKEN HOSTAGE
MAN WITHOUT A GUN him wear a blindfold, or they would wear ski masks, or sit behind a screen. He put himself at enormous risk, again and again.” He did it nine times, achieving the release of 11 western hostages and dozens of Lebanese who had been detained by Israelis in southern Lebanon. And he had a young boy at home, and knew that if any of these meetings ended in captivity his son would suffer just as much as he would, maybe more. Picco’s book on this time, Man Without a Gun, is exhausting enough to read, so the idea of actually living his life is unthinkable. It depicts an endless morass of flights, no sleep, negotiations going round in circles, intractable positions, blindfolds, of being shoved face-first into the floors of speeding cars, of top diplomacy and day-trips to Libya and midnight rendezvous with Israeli agents at checkpoints in the Golan Heights. It was a life rendered bearable by the moments when the hostages realised they were going to be set free. The last of the Americans, Terry Anderson, told him: “My God, I really want to kiss you.” Picco clearly got a buzz from his high-wire work, and would miss it later. “Life usually goes in one direction after such an emotional climax,” he said, “and that’s downhill.” McCarthy later met Picco while filming a documentary on hostage negotiators, and learned a great deal more about him. The two men came to share a view that most parties in even the most apparently atrocious behaviour are, at heart, human. Picco told him about the last time he was driven around Beirut, and put his hand on the arm of the man next to him, who he believed (he couldn’t see) was Imad Mughniyeh, the military mastermind of Hezbollah who would later die in a 2008 car bomb (and was also believed to be one of the hijackers on the TWA flight mentioned in the main story). “He said the guy was shaking like a leaf. He said he recognised this guy’s actions were deplorable, but he wasn’t doing them for personal gain. He was — Giandomenico had a great expression for it — ‘a misguided patriot’. This guy wasn’t really full of bravado; he thought he was doing the right thing and this was the way to do it.” This chimed with McCarthy. “I was really struck by that. It so echoed the thing I had about these guys: terrible, terrible stuff, but within the context of the world they had grown up in, this is what they thought. Nobody was good in this, inside or outside.”
LEFT A BILLBOARD DRAWS ATTENTION TO THE PLIGHT OF THE BRITISH HOSTAGE JOHN MCCARTHY, HELD CAPTIVE IN BEIRUT, AFTER BEING KIDNAPPED BY ISLAMIC JIHAD, THE LEBANESE TERRORIST GROUP
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TERRY ANDERSON
he had interesting insights, having grown up in Northern Ireland, particularly Belfast, during The Troubles as a very politically minded young man, and a sensitive, intellectual guy. So we came to realise that whilst we hated one or two of these guards because they were vicious bastards, it was only one or two. And while they were all responsible for putting a chain on me, for putting a gun to my head, for making us wear blindfolds when they were in the cell, let’s step back from that. I’m interested that most of these guys are not abusing us.” Given almost infinite time to consider their position, the two hostages came to try to think of the guards’ perspective and motivations, particularly those who were, within the absurd parameters of the situation, behaving with a moderate amount of humanity. They realised that most of their guards were around 20 years old, so had spent most of their
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childhoods amid a civil war. “So since they’ve been 10, their experience has been chaos, horrible chaos, brutal, brutal lunacy, civil war that you and I will never understand, where suddenly two dads will shoot each other because of political reasons or because your dad’s a Christian and his dad’s a Muslim. Most people would think of [the guards] as monsters, and certainly the outside world would depict them as Islamic terrorists. But we would think: that’s not really true, is it? They’re just young men who bizarrely seem to have, for the most part, some sense of human decency.” This seems an exceptionally generous appraisal of people who served his food on the floor, caused him to have to defecate on a bit of newspaper in front of another man, tuned a radio to static and hung it outside his cell door on full volume for weeks at a time, and countless other unnecessary torments. But even so, the recollection of some remaining humanity in his captors informed his career choices ever after. Coming back to the region later, he would find himself drawn to telling their story in more detail. This led to some remarkable instances. He went back to Lebanon in 2004, partly for a sense of moving on, partly for an assignment on Shia Muslims. While there, he interviewed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. Nasrallah was probably, ultimately, the man responsible for McCarthy’s own kidnapping. “He always denies responsibility,” McCarthy says. “But when I interviewed Nasrallah, I asked him: what about the hostage situation? He said: ‘Hezbollah was always working very hard to ensure the release’.” He laughs wryly. “It was very clever wording. He didn’t say we did do it,
but he didn’t say we didn’t do it. It’s like saying: of course a kidnapper also wants to negotiate the release of hostages, that’s why they took them in the first place.” During the same trip, McCarthy was with a local journalist in Baalbek, a Shiadominated town famed for its Roman ruins in the Bekaa Valley, where McCarthy was very likely held for at least a part of his captivity. While there, he was walking around a pretty park in the centre of town, and noticed a fleet of cars going around them at the edge of the park: three jeeps, a couple of Mercedes. He asked the journalist: what are those cars doing? And he said: “It’s your friends. They have come to take a look at you.” The inference appeared to be that it was his old guards. He felt safe, he said, knowing that his meetings with Hezbollah had been approved to the very highest level, and was assured by his fixer that the people in the cars would not try anything, nor even risk attempting to speak with him. Emboldened, and seeing one car had a window down, McCarthy bent down as they passed and gave a cheery wave. “And the convoy raced off.”
WALKING TO FREEDOM
McCarthy’s ability to move on in this way is admirable, yet not so uncommon. Terry Anderson, who was held longer than any other hostage in Lebanon, for over seven years, has publicly forgiven his captors, and even once shook hands with one, an image that was actually used against him when he stood for a seat in the Ohio Senate in 2003. Norman Kember, who was imprisoned for four months in Iraq in 2005, not only forgave his captors but put in a plea for mercy on their behalf when they faced the death penalty at trial.
But moving on is not necessarily the same as forgiveness. Asked if he has forgiven, McCarthy thinks for a while. “I still remain angry that they never let my mother know about me,” he says. “All they had to do was come in, click, and release a statement from me with a photograph holding the Daily Star [a Lebanese paper] with a date on it. Then she could have died knowing I was alive. And I don’t know why they didn’t do that. I don’t think they were monstrous, so I cannot understand. I would like to ask that question. Why would somebody not do that? It was a completely unnecessary cruelty on top of the fact that they had taken her son away.”
“AND WHILE THEY WERE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR PUTTING A CHAIN ON ME, FOR PUTTING A GUN TO MY HEAD, FOR MAKING US WEAR BLINDFOLDS WHEN THEY WERE IN THE CELL, THEY WERE NOT ABUSIVE.”
“But in terms of forgiving them? Forgiveness is an important part of many people’s faiths, and the Christian tradition I grew up with, but I don’t feel I have a need to forgive. People used to say: don’t you feel terribly bitter? I said I feel angry, yes, but the world has changed for me and I’ve been lucky with the way it panned out.
PHOTOS: CORBIS (TERRY ANDERSON); AFP (OPPOSITE)
Palestinians, and Arabs more broadly. But that’s just not how McCarthy has come out. “Although the situation of being held hostage was extremely abusive — total denial of my human rights, total illegitimate removal of me, removal from my loved ones of their real freedom because I was banged up — I did come to realise that things were not straightforward," he says. "I was very lucky to be held with Brian Keenan in particular:
TAKEN HOSTAGE AFTER FIVE AND A HALF YEARS IN CAPTIVITY, A 34-YEAROLD JOHN MCCARTHY, ACCOMPANIED BY HIS FATHER PAT, WALKS FREE ON TO HOME SOIL IN AUGUST 1991 OPPOSITE TERRY ANDERSON WAS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS' BEIRUT BUREAU CHIEF WHEN HE WAS KIDNAPPED IN 1985 AND HELD CAPTIVE FOR NEARLY SEVEN LONG YEARS
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AFTER CAPTIVITY, MANY HOSTAGES DOCUMENT THEIR EXPERIENCES IN PRINT. JOHN MCCARTHY IS THE AUTHOR OF FOUR BOOKS, INCLUDING SOME OTHER RAINBOW AND YOU CAN'T HIDE THE SUN. EXHOSTAGE INGRID BETANCOURT (RIGHT), WHO SPENT SIX YEARS AS A PRISONER OF COLOMBIAN REBELS, PENNED THE TOME, EVEN SILENCE HAS AN END 66 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
TAKEN HOSTAGE
Work is good, I’ve moved on, I’m married with a little girl, and I’m not going to say my life was ruined by it. It was blighted, for a little while, and perhaps towards the end my mother’s life was ruined by it, but everyone else has come through it all right. If I’m bitter, I’m still a hostage to them.”
“I’VE MOVED ON, AND I’M NOT GOING TO SAY MY LIFE WAS RUINED BY IT. IT WAS BLIGHTED, FOR A LITTLE WHILE, AND PERHAPS TOWARDS THE END MY MOTHER’S LIFE WAS RUINED BY IT, BUT EVERYONE ELSE HAS COME THROUGH IT ALL RIGHT. IF I’M BITTER, I’M STILL A HOSTAGE, TO THEM”
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (OPPOSITE); AFP (ABOVE)
HEROES AND VILLAINS
Other hostage ordeals are shorter, but with a greater confrontation of violence. In June 1985, the Trans World Airlines flight TWA 847, was hijacked by Shiite Hezbollah terrorists shortly after leaving Athens en route to Rome. Diverted backwards and forwards between Beirut and Algiers over several days, the flight is chiefly remembered for the murder of US Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem.
But perhaps the most stoic behaviour under pressure came from the chief flight attendant, Uli Derickson, who had the only language in common with the hijackers, German, and so was the translator and liaison for most of the hijacking. She is widely credited with calming the hijackers at extremely tense moments, most notably in Algiers when airport officials were refusing to refuel the plane without payment, even when the hijackers threatened to start killing hostages if they continued to refuse. Derickson calmly got out her credit card and paid $5,500 for 6,000 gallons of jet fuel (she was reimbursed in the end). More heroically still, she was ordered by the hijackers to go through all of the passports and look for Jewish names among them. She found plenty — and, in turn, hid the lot. But hostages held together don’t always find common ground. Betancourt has said that the one scenario she never imagined in captivity was the one that played out: hostages turning upon one another. She and her closest fellow captive, her assistant Clara Rojas who was kidnapped with her, are no longer believed to be in touch, and several other former hostages have spoken disparagingly of Betancourt since release. McCarthy is the most pleasant and genial man imaginable, and remains very close to Keenan and Anderson in particular, but he lost touch with fellow hostage Thomas Sutherland quickly following their release after Sutherland went against the other hostages’ wishes in participating in a film about the hostage crisis. And in any multiple seizure, there is of course the thorny matter of the order of release: in the Sipadan kidnapping (a dive resort in southern
Philippines) in 2000, there appears to have been some tension around the behaviour of a German woman whose apparent illness, diagnosed by a Philippine government doctor as hypertension, secured her release sooner than some other hostages. And after all the foreigners had been freed in September 2000, everyone seemed to forget that there was one man left behind: Filipino dive instructor Roland Ullah, who would not see freedom for another three years. A modern example of hostage disagreement, and also of a short but violent ordeal, is Captain Richard Phillips, whose ordeal on the Maersk Alabama off Somalia in 2009 is now a Tom Hanks blockbuster movie bearing his name. The movie depicts Phillips as sacrificing himself into captivity to save his crew, whereupon he was stuck on a pitching lifeboat with three pirates at gunpoint until US Navy Seals, in a truly extraordinary feat of marksmanship, shot all three pirates simultaneously from a nearby warship. But once the film came out, fellow members of the crew, challenged this version of events. Mike Perry, the chief engineer, who captured one of the hijackers and whose behaviour was definitely heroic, accused the ship's captain of deception and of steering the ship into dangerous waters despite receiving seven warnings from a security agency not to go there. In fairness, the central claim, that Phillips bargained to give himself up as a hostage in order to free his crew, appears nowhere in Phillips’ own autobiography, and appears to be an invention for Hollywood. Phillips doesn’t portray his own decisions as flawless, and actually speaks very highly of Perry. Perhaps this tells us
something else — that movies of hostage situations rarely do much for the equanimity of the former hostages themselves.
PERSPECTIVE
Hostages tend to take on an odd, defining level of fame and to be absorbed into their cultures. Take McCarthy: the Northern Irish punk rock band Stiff Little Fingers wrote a song about him. Linus Roache played him in one film, Colin Firth in another. The Hull University student union bar is named after him. And he is mentioned in two of the greatest comedies
INGRID BETANCOURT
of all time, The Office (in which David Brent, wanting to be on the TV show Parkinson, says: “He had that guy in Lebanon who spent years chained to a radiator? What did he do? Nothing! He was chained to a radiator!) and Father Ted, in which the priests name their pet hamsters Keenan and McCarthy. “That’s brilliant!” McCarthy says, with what looks like real delight. “Forever, we are a real footnote.” They are, it’s true. And though the shadow of being an ex-hostage is difficult to escape, it is some measure of the depths these people found in themselves that many of them can say they were enriched by the experience. “Ultimately,” McCarthy says, “I think I found a better perspective because of that experience than if I had caught that plane home from Beirut in the spring of 1986.”
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PHOTO: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES
ARE YOU EX
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INTERACTIVE 3D
PERIENCED? DO YOU HAVE A WORLD SHIFTING IDEA? IF SO, THEN THIS MAY BE THE TIME TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. NOT ONLY CAN YOU BREATH LIFE INTO THE IDEA VIA THE VIRTUAL ROUTE BUT ALSO GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO ROAM, EXPLORE AND EVEN CRASH-TEST THE LIMITS OF YOUR BRAVE NEW WORLD. LUKE CLARK TELLS US HOW
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IN 1350, THE BLACK DEATH HAD JUST SWEPT ACROSS EUROPE, KILLING ABOUT HALF OF THE PARIS POPULATION IN TWO YEARS. IN THIS 3D BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE CITY AT THAT TIME, THE NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS CAN ALREADY BE SEEN AS A MAGNIFICENT STRUCTURE STANDING TALL AND GLORIOUS AMONG THE CITY’S BUILDINGS
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PHOTO: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES
FANCY USING ICEBERGS TO FACILITATE DRINKING WATER IN AFRICA, OR TO TRAVEL BACK 3000 YEARS INTO THE EGYPT OF YORE? WELL, ITS NOT AS FICTITIOUS AS IT MAY APPEAR. PHILIPPE FORESTIER, ONE OF THE TEN FOUNDERS OF DASSAULT SYSTÈMES WANTS TO CHANGE THE WORLD THROUGH HIS EXPERIENTIAL TECHNOLOGY. ADMITTEDLY, WHEN YOU SIT WITH FORESTIER FOR AN HOUR, YOU START TO BECOME INTOXICATED WITH THE EXCITEMENT OF POSSIBILITIES BY STRETCHING THE REALM OF 3D SIMULATION.
INTERACTIVE 3D
or the executive VP of global affairs and communities for Dassault Systèmes, based at the company’s global headquarters in Paris, France (in the übertechno sounding DS Campus), the 3D journey has been a busy one. Forestier was originally one of the 10 founding members of Dassault Systèmes, a company that now numbers over 12,000 and is rated by Forbes as being among the most
innovative companies in the world today. Having initially cut its teeth on producing simulation technologies for companies in areas including aerospace, engineering and energy, Dassault Systèmes is now eyeing a new frontier that its leaders feel is in need of their breed of 3D experiences — namely the field of education. At a time when many
parents in the world worry that their children are more excited by games like Minecraft than by physics or history lessons, companies like Dassault Systèmes argue that increasingly, the challenge should not be for children to catch up on their studies — but for education to start keeping up with our kids. “Boys and girls are very sensitive to 3D experiences,”
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says Forestier. “And we have many initiatives in the domain of education.” Increasingly he says, today’s technologysoaked children take to even the company’s most complex applications almost intuitively. “it is very curious to see the way that they approach the most complex technologies, like robotics technologies or system engineering technology, which are normally used by very senior engineers. So we can have boys and girls of 14 and 15 years old, access complex technologies.”
PHOTOS: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES
“WE ARE APPROACHED BY PASSIONATE PEOPLE, THAT HAVE BIG DREAMS. WE THEN SET ABOUT TRANSFORMING THEIR DREAMS INTO REALITY, THANKS TO 3D” He describes an initiative that the company has helped launch in several countries which sees students designing real-world racing cars, taking them through several stages. “We help them design it and manufacture it with 3D printing. So it’s not only designing the product, they need to do the branding, the marketing, the business case — and then we race the car on new tracks. And there’s a winner at both the local school level, and national level,” he notes. “Of course, for young boys and girls, this kind of activity is very attractive. And they learn a lot too — they learn engineering, manufacturing, business and marketing, all at once.” He echoes the fear among many that our classrooms have not kept pace 72 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
with many other sectors of our society. “Yes, because when we look at the way engineering and manufacturing has changed in one century, it has evolved dramatically. But the classroom is still the same. It’s a class in silos of education. I think we need to transform that.” Lack of talent in key industries could over time have serious repercussions, he warns. “Our customers are starving because of a lack of talents.” Much of the solution, he feels, lies in injecting excitement back into the classroom. “In North America, we have a lot of activity in order to generate more interest for science and technology in young boys and girls, because many are not attracted necessarily by science and technology” he observes. “This can help education. Because 3D is like a kind of serious game. We can improve the education curriculums, for them to be more multi-disciplined, project oriented and visual,” he notes. “Imagine a young boy or girl with heads in the stars, because up to ten years old, they went with Mum and Dad to museums, saw lots of great things, and were attracted by the world,” he describes. “Then they go into classes, learning mathematics, physics, science. It’s not attractive — they are getting bored very quickly.” The company is well versed at helping make learning into an event. In 2012, Paris citizens got to enjoy the first 3D portrayal of the city’s history, in front of an audience of more than 15,000 citizens. Launching the first stage of a multi-faceted 3D program, viewers at Paris’ City Hall (l’Hôtel de Ville) enjoyed the story on nine giant 3D displays. The two-year project, known as Paris 3D Saga, showed a portrayal of Paris throughout the ages, travelling back to medieval times. For the first time, the city’s residents could travel back to the
PARIS 3D PROVIDES VIEWERS A VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE OF PARIS, TO RELIVE MOMENTS LIKE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE EIFFEL TOWER. EACH DETAIL IN THIS 3D UNIVERSE IS VERIFIED AND VALIDATED WITH HISTORY EXPERTS
INTERACTIVE 3D
LEFTDASSAULT SYSTÈMES COLLABORATED WITH THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS IN BOSTON AND HARVARD UNIVERSITY TO DEVELOP A 3D RECREATION OF THE ANCIENT GIZA PLATEAU RIGHT IN MR & MRS DREAM, WITH THE PIETRAGALLADEROUAULT COMPANY, A LIVE PERFORMANCE WAS CREATED WHERE VIRTUAL REALITY AND SIMULATION TECHNOLOGY WERE USED TO CREATE A WHOLE NEW SCENIC LANGUAGE
moments when the Eiffel Tower was being built, and even fly around its construction. Dassault Systèmes created an interactive 3D experience which could be accessed across different devices and platforms, including a website, iPad application, 3D-powered films, 3D educational documentaries, and 3D touch terminals used by museums, educational and cultural institutions. For the company, Paris 3D Saga is part of a wider program dubbed ‘Passion for Innovation’, aimed at enabling its cuttingedge technology to be used by historians, archaeologists, researchers and inventors. “We realise that art is at the cornerstone of science and technology,” says Forrestier. “And we are approached by passionate people that have big dreams. So we then set about transforming their dreams into reality, thanks to 3D.” As he explains, the process of transforming a theory into a visual expression that somebody could actually dance about in, can be an extremely powerful tool. “These people have a lot of things in their heads that they have imagined, but they want to demonstrate,” he notes. “The first example we did was with a guy who has studied the Egyptian pyramids for 25 years of his life. And he had an idea: ‘I think I know the way that these pyramids were built’. But he could not prove it — so we helped him to demonstrate his theory.” As he explains, Dassault Systèmes was able to help him to experiment with engineering technologies of 3,000 years ago. “How did people put together these big blocks of 60-70 tonnes? We were developing the theory in order to reconstruct the pyramids,” he outlines. In order to really test the hypothesis developed, he says, the next step would be real tests inside the pyramids. 73 JULY 2014
“This theory, we feel, is very accurate. But the exciting mystery around Egypt is maintained by the Egyptian authorities.” Another client came seeking a potential answer to global shortages of fresh drinking water, using icebergs. “He said to himself, how can I drag one to countries that need water? Like Africa, for example,” he says. “We solved the technical challenges virtually, and now if a country is interested in doing this, we know how to do it.”
PHOTO: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES
“IF YOU CREATE A MOVIE AS AN ASSEMBLY OF IMAGES, YOU CANNOT INTEGRATE AN IMAGE WITHOUT COMPLETELY REFORMATTING THE MOVIE. THEREIN LIES THE DIFFERENCE” “Each time, we have a passionate person with a technological challenge, and then we create a story.” Clients of the past have included famous creators such as architect Frank Gehry and film director Luc Besson. Yet as he explains, the 3D experience goes beyond just viewing something multi-dimensional. “There’s a big difference between a movie, which is an assembly of images, and an experience. If you visualise a scene, a 3D experience scene, you can modify it. We can visualise sitting here, and put an additional chair in it, or an extra person.” “If you create a movie, as an assembly of images, you cannot integrate an image without 74 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
INTERACTIVE 3D
ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY STUDENTS ENJOY AN IMMERSIVE, INTERACTIVE 3D EXPERIENCE USING DASSAULT SYSTÈMES’ VIRTUAL REALITY TECHNOLOGY. THEY DIVE INTO MEDIEVAL PARIS, FOR A 360 DEGREE VIEW OF WHAT THEY LEARN IN TEXT BOOKS
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completely reformatting the movie. So there’s a difference: we are creating experiences.” The company also provided a solution to help Harvard University teach Egyptology. “They have a program, Giza 3D, where they teach Egyptology with a 3D case: they can immerse the students in an environment where the Egyptians were 3,000 years ago. Because 3D is ubiquity in time and space.”
“YOU CAN SIMULATE THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF A CITY, OR VISUALISE THE TRAFFIC FLOWS. SIMULATION IN LIFE SCIENCES CAN HELP WITH CANCER AND OTHER MOLECULAR RESEARCH” Of course, while you can move around and view different aspect, just how much of a reallife experience you will actually get in this 3D world remains limited by current technology. Forestier notes that future advances will increasingly allow users more interaction and deeper immersion. “We have prototypes where we are trying to make sure that the 3D virtual reality, which is in some way still a video, can add new dimensions to the movie — so you can really interact directly with the scene you are producing,” he outlines. “We worked with [film director] Luc Besson and with people in motion capture. We were showing a movie to young boys and girls, and at some point in time one of the people in the 76 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
movie was asking one of the boys and girls in the theatre, ‘Hey you, little boy with the red shirt, what’s your name?’ So there was an interaction. Of course, this was driven by someone piloting behind the scenes. So it’s still prototyping. But it’s the first way to create this interaction between the world of experiences.” For Forestier, it is in the areas of improving our wider knowledge and solving problems, where the possibilities begin to get really exciting. “We are not only in the simulation of vehicles, to help
PHOTOS: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES
THIS AERIAL VIEW OF THE GIZA PLATEAU SHOWS THE POSITION OF EACH OF THE COMPLEXES, TEMPLES AND TOMBS. VISITORS CAN IMMERSE THEMSELVES INTO A VIRTUAL REALITY TOUR (BELOW) AND EXPERIENCE THE SPLENDOURS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES.
INTERACTIVE 3D
PRINT YOUR OWN FRIDGE DOOR
Philippe Forestier is also excited by the potential in his industry for 3D printing. “This technology is very interesting for us. We have our own internal lab, in order to have people coming in and designing whatever they want — then printing them,” he says. “You can take a picture of yourself, and print your face out in 3D. So yes, 3D printing is certainly transforming the world of the making.” “It is also used for industry. In aerospace, we design complex parts as one single part, and not in different parts assembled together. It will also be used with transplants.” Forestier sees potential for the technology in terms of transforming the world of the fixing.“When you break the door of your refrigerator at home, instead of buying the part, you just recreate it yourself and you print it. I think this has multiple benefits, and we are very engaged in this transformation of the world of manufacturing.” Of course, 3D experience creators don’t come out of school ready-made. Has it been a challenge to find them? “It’s still a challenge,” he says. “It was a challenge to find the designers that could use 3D technology — just as it was a challenge to eliminate the physical prototype in manufacturing,” he says “Everyone at some point likes to stay in their comfort zone. Often for us, it means that we have to convince at the highest level of the company, and of the industry, in order to have those new technologies accepted — then to transform the way things are done.” 77 JULY 2014
BMW or Toyota built better cars, or Airbus or Boeing to build better planes. But we are also in the simulation of nature, and in the simulation of life.” “Life science for us is extremely critical — for example, we have a significant acquisition, in its finalisation process, of a company in San Diego, to simulate molecules,” he notes. “Through propagation of some diseases in cells, we hope to help doctors cure some forms of cancers. Simulation can be a be a big tool for that.”
“THE AIM OF SIMULATION IS TO INCREASE EFFICIENCIES AND CUT COSTS BESIDES FUELLING IMAGINATION FOR RADICAL INNOVATION, WHICH IS A PRESSING NEED OF 21ST CENTURY” The technology can also be used in complex systems like cities. “We provided a 3D experience platform, to allow all the people working, whether you’re in charge of urbanism, architects, planners, developers, and the citizens themselves, to work together.” To test a crisis situation in a heavily populated area, reallife trials on different courses of action may be near impossible, not to mention dangerous. In such cases, simulation can be crucial. “When you take a decision, you had better understand the impact of your decision on those outside,” he explains. “You can ask, what will be the impact of flooding on certain areas, then make it very visible. You could simulate the carbon 78 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
FRENCH ENGINEER GEORGES MOUGIN HAD A DREAM TO CONVERT ICEBERGS INTO DRINKING WATER. WITH THE SOLUTION DEVELOPED (THIS AND RIGHT), HE TESTED THE SCENARIOS INVOLVED AND PROVED HIS PROJECT WAS TECHNICALLY VIABLE
PHOTOS: DASSAULT SYSTÈMES
INTERACTIVE 3D
footprint of the city, or visualise its traffic flows. You can completely design the system, then see the impact of whatever inputs you want.” Forestier says that from a production point of view, the aim of simulation technology is to increase efficiencies and decrease costs. “We work with ‘leapfrogging’ the way that companies do business,” he explains. “A car manufacturer now is capable of producing a car in one year — 20 or 30 years ago, it would take four or five years. This change cannot be achieved without the support of these technologies.” A major aspect is also reducing the carbon footprint of physical trials. “When we worked with BMW and other car manufacturers, and you wanted to crash a car in front of a wall to design the airbags — why crash a real car with a real mannequin in front of a wall? Especially if we can do that in a computer, with a level of accuracy that is perfect,” he says. “In the mining industry, we work with people drilling in the ground to find minerals. We have a simulation on the ground, which helps them minimise the drilling they have to do. Virtual technology allows you to do things right the first time — so that we can protect the environment.” As companies like Dassault Systèmes try to help clients streamline their processes and clean up their act at the same time, Forestier is also aware that though innovation may be improving exponentially, so are the problems that we have to contend with. Not least of these challenges is climate change. He believes that in the face of all these global obstacles, we will in turn see an unprecedented wave of innovation happening within the next 85 years or so. In essence, the challenge may be for society and industry to invent its way out of trouble. “When we look at all the
key challenges of humanity, there may need to be more inventions in the 21st century than there were innovations and inventions in the history of humanity,” he says Forestier. “What are the new ways of producing energy — what are the new ways of improving global health? What are the ways we can improve food supply, or disease? We want to provide solutions to the people in charge.” When he eventually travels back to France after speaking with DCM, there will very likely be other interesting characters knocking at his door with a new problem to solve. We asked Forestier what the process was like, when a famous architect,
capacity to imagine? He counters the notion, citing as an example, the Coriolis effect, whereby when you’re on Earth’s north pole, water goes down a drain in the one direction, while in the south, it is the other. “If you show the mathematical equation to your children, they can’t understand it unless they’re good at mathematics. If you show- it visually in 3D they’ll understand much more easily,” he insists. “It’s not something that will limit their imagination — it will boost it, and increase the way they can create and invent new things. If you look at the recent Nobel Prize in Chemistry winners, they could not have won without the support of
for instance, comes calling. Initially he says, the process is one of understanding the unique vision of each artist in question. “It’s a new dimension to their art that we’re providing. For Frank Gehry, I think he could not do his buildings without the support of a solution,” he notes. “And he is not an IT guy, he’s not a guy in love with computers. But we use our technology in order to quickly produce a simulation of his dreams.” What does Forestier say to those who feel that 3D experiences may limit our
experience technology.” Some clients have ideas that stretch to the stars. “I’m working with a woman right now, who has a dream. She’s an artist, doing sculpture in metal — she’s used to making big metal sculptures, tens of metres high.” Her dreamedabout project is something far different. “She’s coming to us and saying, ‘I would like to do a metallic sculpture to go on the moon. How do I do that?’” He laughs. “It’s a key challenge — and we’ve solved the challenge. Now we just need to find the rockets, that’s all.” 79 JULY 2014
HOUSE OF CARDS
THE REPORTERS WHO TOOK ON A PRESIDENT WHILE PEOPLE IN WASHINGTON MIGHT HAVE KNOWN WATERGATE AS THE NAME OF A HOTEL, THE WORLD OVER IT WAS THE NAME OF THE BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL THAT BROUGHT DOWN PRESIDENT NIXON. CHRIS WRIGHT RECONSTRUCTS THE CHAIN OF EVENTS THAT BEGAN WITH A SMALL WEEKEND NEWS EVENT — AND WENT ON TO CHANGE THE COURSE OF WESTERN HISTORY
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PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
WATERGATE FACTS
THE WATERGATE SCANDAL ROCKED THE WORLD. RICHARD NIXON, 37TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, RESIGNED IN 1974 UNDER A LOOMING THREAT OF IMPEACHMENT
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rom the moment Richard Milhous Nixon took office as President of the United States in 1969, he put a premium on knowing all about the opposition. “Information and money,” writes Fred Emery in Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon, one of the principle sources for this article. “These two indispensible
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political commodities were immediately pinpointed by Richard Nixon as cardinal to his re-election four years later.” Even before his inauguration in 1969, Emery writes, Nixon wrote clear instructions to Bob Haldeman, his chief of staff, instructing him to build up funds, including “a private fund for secret political
purposes. The Nixon men were to run up huge amounts by methods close to extortion. This approach contributed greatly to Watergate and to the abuses associated with its initial cover-up.” Emery also notes how Nixon — who would contest five elections in total, including two as vicepresident, and who in 1960 lost to John F Kennedy by a
mere 113,000 votes — seemed driven by a fear of losing, perhaps because when he took office both houses of Congress were controlled by the opposition. “Nixon never seemed to have accepted that he had finally won. From the outset of his presidency, Nixon seemed obsessed by the fear of being a one-term president,” Emery writes.
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN); CORBIS (HOWARD HUNT, GORDON LIDDY)
“FROM THE OUTSET OF HIS PRESIDENCY, NIXON SEEMED OBSESSED BY THE FEAR OF BEING A ONE-TERM PRESIDENT”
ABOVE NIXON AT CAMP DAVID SOON AFTER HE HAD BEEN RE-ELECTED. AT THIS POINT, THE WATERGATE BURGLARS HAD NOT YET BEEN PUT TO TRIAL
In his memoirs, Nixon writes, “I decided that we must begin immediately keeping track of everything the leading Democrats did. Information would be our first line of defence.” Nixon and bugging were bedfellows well before Watergate. In early 1969, he was enraged by leaks about the secret bombing of Cambodia and approached the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J Edgar Hoover, who said wiretaps were the most effective answer. They placed taps on 13 US officials at the White House, State and Defense departments, and several reporters. But crucially, Nixon’s administration then even sidestepped the FBI itself, conducting wiretaps and, ultimately, break-ins on its own. The seeds of Watergate and its cast of characters were sown in 1971, and three moments in particular were pivotal. Early that year a new campaign organisation was
COMMITTEE TO RE-ELECT THE PRESIDENT
WATERGATE FACTS
RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON 37th President of the United States
BOB HALDEMAN Nixon's Chief of Staff
JOHN MITCHELL Chairman of CRP
E HOWARD HUNT Member of the White House "plumbers"
set up called the Committee to Re-Elect the President, or CRP, which the world would come to know as “CREEP”. It was separate from the Republican Party itself and was set up in offices across the street from the White House; CRP would eventually be chaired by John Mitchell, who resigned from his role as US Attorney General in order to run it. Also in 1971, Nixon’s paranoia and use of surveillance intensified with the leak of the socalled Pentagon Papers, a highly detailed account of American involvement in Vietnam which was leaked to the New York Times and later other newspapers by a man called Daniel Ellsberg. Nixon’s attempts to punish Ellsberg were wide-ranging, and included attempts to find dirt on him, for which a man called E Howard Hunt was hired. Hunt was a spy of many decades’ service. The efforts to get Ellsberg were the genesis of the formation of a White House special investigations unit, which would come to be known as “the plumbers” (since their main role was to plug leaks). An early recruit was G Gordon Liddy. One of the first acts of this group was to try to get psychiatric records for Ellsberg, and when his psychiatrist refused to hand them over, they decided to go and steal them. There’s a memo about this operation that appears to have been approved by John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s righthand man; one could call this the beginning of the activity that would culminate in Watergate. Hunt, who had been involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the early 1960s, recruited a number of Cuban exiles who broke in on September 3, 1971, only for
G GORDON LIDDY Member of the White House "plumbers"
JOHN EHRLICHMAN Nixon's Chief Domestic Advisor
JOHN DEAN White House Counsel
CHARLES COLSON Nixon's Special Counsel
JAMES McCORD Security coordinator of CRP
JEB MAGRUDER Deputy director of CRP
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the break-in to go wrong and yield no sign of Ellsberg’s files. When that failed, Liddy briefly pitched an idea of putting LSD into Ellsberg’s soup at a public dinner to discredit him (this, mercifully, did not get far). “They had acquired a taste for corruption and convinced themselves that it was what the boss wanted,” writes Emery. “The next, still more dangerous, moves were increasingly inevitable.”
WILD IDEAS TO SNOOP AND TRACK THE DEMOCRATS CAME AND WENT. ONE WAS TO FIREBOMB THE DEMOCRATIC BROOKINGS INSTITUTION AND GET SECRET DOCUMENTS FROM INSIDE THE OFFICE.
There was a third momentous decision in 1971. Having ordered a taping mechanism that existed before he took office to be ripped out, Nixon now ordered that almost all his conversations be taperecorded. From February 1971, they were. By early 1972 most of the cast of Watergate was in place. In addition to Ehrlichman, Haldeman and Mitchell, other key lieutenants to Nixon included John Dean, White House Counsel, and Charles Colson, an absolute bruiser who had served in the US Marines and had a motto written on his wall: “If you’ve got ‘em by the balls, the hearts 84 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
and minds will follow.” At the CRP, retired CIA officer James McCord became a full-time member on January 1, around the time Liddy was put in charge of intelligence gathering for the organisation. Another key man was Jeb Magruder, the deputy director of the CRP. Wild ideas came and went. One was to firebomb the Democratic Brookings Institution and get secret documents from within it; Hunt and Liddy developed a plan to buy a fire engine, dress a load of Cubans in fireproof gear, and make sure they were the first responders so as to get in and raid the vault. While that didn’t happen, Liddy did pitch a bizarre plan to Dean, Mitchell and Magruder in January 1972. His operation was codenamed Gemstone, and among its salient proposals were: kidnap demonstration leaders before the Republican convention, drug them and spirit them to Mexico; assign a chase plane to pursue the Democratic nominee’s aircraft to bug its data communications; lure Democrats to prostitutes and eavesdrop on their pillow talk; sabotage the Democratic convention’s air conditioning; and plant bugs. Mitchell would later say, “I should have thrown Liddy out of the window.” But he didn’t, and though most of Liddy’s wild plans were down scaled, they did lead to the Watergate break-ins. There’s one other useful bit of context: none of this was remotely necessary. In any case Nixon had a huge lead in the polls. He couldn’t have lost the 1972 election even if he'd tried. Had he only believed this and focused on government functioning, none of all that what followed would have happened.
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WATERGATE FACTS
TUESDAY JUNE 6, 1972
SUNDAY MAY 28, 1972
5 4
2A
1
PHOTOS: AFP (MAIN); GETTY IMAGES (ROOM PLAN); CORBIS (JACK ANDERSON)
IN EARLY 1973, THE WATERGATE TRIALS BEGAN. COURTROOM EVIDENCE INCLUDED PHOTOS OF THE WATERGATE COMPLEX IN WASHINGTON (ABOVE) AND THE FLOOR PLAN OF THE DNC HEADQUARTERS IN THE WATERGATE COMPLEX (LEFT)
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WATERGATE WEST
2
WATERGATE HOTEL AND OFFICE BUILDING (HOTEL PORTION)
2A WATERGATE HOTEL AND OFFICE BUILDING (OFFICE PORTION) 3
WATERGATE EAST
4
WATERGATE SOUTH
5
WATERGATE OFFICE BUILDING THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE'S (DNC) HEADQUARTERS WERE LOCATED ON THE SIXTH FLOOR
Richard Nixon is in Moscow. It is a landmark moment: he is taking part in the first ever summit between American and Soviet presidents to be held in the Russian capital. He addresses the Soviet people in a televised speech. “Time and again people have vanquished the source of one fear only to fall prey to another,” he tells them. “Let our goal now be a world without fear.” It is Nixon at his best: high policy, thawing dangerously bad relations with the Soviet Union just as he also sought to do, with some success, with China. By now he has also begun to end American involvement in Vietnam. And this Moscow trip will produce the first Strategic Arms Limitations Talks, or SALT, treaty, to reduce the pace of the nuclear arms race. But half a world away, we are also seeing Nixon at his worst. On this same day, a group of people break in to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington DC. This is, in fact, their third attempt in three days, having lacked sufficient competence to get in on the Friday and Saturday. Even this time, one of them manages to get caught, but is simply told to leave and is not arrested; the rest of them photograph documents and plant listening devices inside the phones. There are eight men in the group. Two are employees of Nixon’s campaign organisation, the CRP, which is in full swing trying to ensure Nixon does not lose this November’s election. And the other six are paid for with CRP funds.
Senator George McGovern wins the California primary in the Democrats’ presidential nomination process, effectively winning the contest. He will face Nixon in the election. By now, it has become clear that the bugs planted the previous week aren’t working. One appears useless, and the other not used by the man they wanted to tap. Plans are made to go back in, this time with more of an emphasis on photographing material.
FRIDAY JUNE 16, 1972
GEORGE McGOVERN US Senator, opposed Nixon in 1972 presidential election
JACK ANDERSON One of Washington's leading columnists
Several burglars of Cuban origin arrive at Washington National Airport and promptly bump into one of Washington’s leading columnists, Jack Anderson, who recognises one of them. They drive to the Watergate Hotel and check in under aliases. Liddy, on his way there, jumps a traffic light and is pulled over, but gets away with a verbal warning.
SATURDAY JUNE 17, 1972
In the early hours of the morning, a lookout confirms that the DNC is dark, and the operation begins. The plan is to go through a door that McCord had earlier taped open at garage level, but the team finds it closed; they break in, and, oddly, tape the lock open again. The security guard who discovered the tape the first time makes an inspection and finds the second one, deciding to call the police. Crucially, an unmarked car responds, so the burglars’ lookout does not notify them. The police find the burglars in the DNC offices. The burglars have 85 JULY 2014
keys to their hotels across the street with them, and when the police search those rooms, they find a haul of incriminating material. The key embarrassment for the government is that one of the men arrested is McCord, who is on the CRP staff and whose fingerprints are on file with the FBI.
“THIS WAS NOT JUST HARD-NOSED POLITICS, THIS WAS A CRIME THAT COULD DESTROY US ALL. THE COVER-UP, THUS, WAS IMMEDIATE AND AUTOMATIC” On Saturday morning, the various players act differently: Liddy and Hunt, not arrested but up to their necks in trouble, sleep (though by this time, they have already fled the Watergate Hotel). The FBI, having been summoned by local police puzzled by the surveillance equipment they have found, prepare warrants for rooms 214 and 314 of the Watergate Hotel, where the men had been staying. Liddy, once awake, begins shredding files at the CRP offices. Then, he goes to the White House in order to find a secure line to call his superiors, Mitchell and Magruder, who are in California; he reaches Magruder at a up-scale Beverly Hills hotel. Accounts vary about what happened next, but someone then calls the US Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst, to try to get McCord released before anyone figures out who he is. Liddy tracks Kleindienst down at the Burning Tree 86 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
BOB WOODWARD
Washington Post reporter
CARL BERNSTEIN
Washington Post reporter
Golf and Country Club, and tells him the whole story. Kleindeinst, angry, refuses help, but also doesn’t tell the police or FBI. Having obtained the necessary warrants, the police and FBI search the Watergate hotel rooms and find a stash of hundred-dollar bills with sequential serial numbers, as well as a briefcase containing the burglars’ true identification documents, two address books, and several things incriminating Hunt — mortally embarrassing, since Hunt had been on the White House payroll. Nixon, meanwhile, is in the Bahamas, having a lovely day of fresh air and exercise. Haldeman is on a Key Biscayne beach when he spots press secretary Ron Ziegler running along in a pair of trunks carrying a roll of news agency copy reporting the break-in. At 9am this same day, Bob Woodward’s phone rings: it is the city editor of the Washington Post asking him to come to work to help with the paper’s coverage of the burglary. He gets to the office and sees another reporter is on the story: Carl Bernstein. “Oh God, not Bernstein,” Woodward thinks, as he recalls several office tales about Bernstein’s ability to push his way into a good story and get his byline on it. Bernstein is no more enthralled to see Woodward. “Bob Woodward was a prima donna who played heavily at office politics,” he thinks, noting that, “One office rumour had it that English was not Woodward’s first language.” The two will later write in the 1974 book All The President’s Men: “Bernstein looked like one of those counterculture journalists that Woodward despised.
Bernstein thought that Woodward’s rapid rise at the Post had less to do with his ability than his Establishment credentials.” At the Post, the tip about the break-in goes not to Woodward or Bernstein but to police reporter Alfred Lewis, considered at the Post to be “half cop, half reporter,” they write. His name will be on the first Post story about the break-in, on its Sunday front page. But two other people were also involved in filing for the story that day: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Woodward attends the courtroom where bail is set: US$30,000 for McCord, US$50,000 apiece for the other four men. Asked their occupations, one answers, “anti-communist”. Woodward overhears McCord tell the judge he is retired from the CIA. Over in California, the various senior government figures with knowledge of the Watergate incident meet for a discussion in Mitchell’s LA suite that evening. Magruder will later write: “At some point that Saturday I realised that this was not just hard-nosed politics, this was a crime that could destroy us all. The cover-up, thus, was immediate and automatic; no one ever considered that there would not be a cover-up.”
BOB WOODWARD (PICTURED LEFT) AND CARL BERNSTEIN, THE WASHINGTON POST JOURNALISTS WHOSE NAMES ARE INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO WATERGATE. ALTHOUGH NIXON WAS RE-ELECTED IN 1972, WHEN INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE EVENTUALLY CAME TO LIGHT, HE RESIGNED FROM OFFICE — BECOMING THE FIRST US PRESIDENT TO DO SO
PHOTOS: CORBIS (MAIN, BOTTOM RIGHT)
WATERGATE FACTS
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SUNDAY JUNE 18, 1972
The first Washington Post article appears. Its headline reads, “5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats’ Office Here”. Associated Press has something more: it has noticed that McCord is the security coordinator of the CRP. Nixon flies back to the US mainland to his residence in Key Biscayne. He claims the first he hears of Watergate is a story in the Miami Herald when he lands: “Miamians Held in DC try to Bug Demo Headquarters”. He writes, “It sounded preposterous; Cubans in surgical gloves bugging the DNC! I dismissed it as some sort of prank.” Mitchell, now the president’s campaign manager, issues a statement saying: “This man and the other people involved were not operating on either our behalf or with our consent.” Not convinced, DNC chairman Lawrence F O’Brien says the break-in has “raised the ugliest question about the integrity of the political process that I have encountered in a quarter century of political activity”. Today, Woodward and Bernstein are the only reporters assigned to following up the story, and their activity gives an indication of just how much grunt work will be involved in the investigation. There is no answer at McCord’s consulting agency, nor his home, but they know the address of his business is a large office building in Rockville, Maryland. They find a directory listing the building’s tenants — so they split the names between them and begin calling every single one at home. One person dimly remembers somebody called Westall, or something 88 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
like that, who knew McCord. So the journalists find a telephone directory and call every single person they can find with a name that sounds like Westall. Eventually they find Harlan A Westrell. This call leads to other names, then others, the vast majority of them dead ends. It is not glamorous. It is miserable head-pounding monotony. But it is this work ethic that will eventually bring down the president.
WATERGATE FACTS
placing a flowerpot with a red flag on the balcony of his apartment; when Deep Throat wanted a meeting he would make a mark on page 20 of Woodward’s New York Times, circling the page number and drawing clock hands to indicate the time. Nixon claims it is only today that he first hears that someone on the CRP payroll was involved in the breakin. Other sources reckon it must have been Sunday; he is believed to have called Colson twice that day and smashed an ashtray in anger. Either way, by today, he is plotting how to keep the scandal covered up and planning attacks against the Democrats. Also today, Dean meets Liddy, and swiftly begins arranging hush money payments to keep the burglars quiet. Several people, including Magruder, spend the evening burning documents; McCord, from jail, calls his wife to do the same. She burns so much that the sitting room has to be repainted.
MONDAY JUNE 19, 1972
The first of many landmark front pages in the Washington Post appears under the byline Woodward and Bernstein: “GOP Security Aide Among Five Arrested in Bugging Affair.” The man in question is McCord. In the early hours of the morning Woodward had been called by a colleague saying he'd heard that Hunt's name was in two address books of people arrested at the break-in. Later, Woodward tracks Hunt down at a public relations firm called Mullen. Why, he asks Hunt, is his name and number in those address books? “Good God!” says Hunt. He offers no comment and hangs up. Woodward later learns that Hunt is ex-CIA.
WOODSTEINS' WORK WAS NOT GLAMOROUS. IT WAS MISERABLE MONOTONY. BUT IT WAS THE WORK ETHIC THAT BROUGHT DOWN THE PRESIDENT
ABOVE A LARGE ANTI-WAR RALLY OPPOSED TO THE VIETNAM WAR HEADS TOWARDS THE CAPITOL BUILDING IN 1971, DURING NIXON'S FIRST TERM LEFT THIS PARKING GARAGE WAS THE MAIN PLACE WHERE WOODWARD AND THE SECRETIVE "DEEP THROAT" WOULD MEET
It is believed that this incident is the first in which Woodward speaks to the man who will become one of the most famous sources in the history of journalism, known for over 30 years as Deep Throat — before being unmasked in 2005 as FBI associate director Mark Felt. The methods of approaching the source will become increasingly clandestine as the stakes rise. Woodward would signal he wanted a meeting by
MARK FELT (ALSO KNOWN AS "DEEP THROAT")
FBI associate director
LAWRENCE F O’BRIEN
Democratic National Committee chairman
TUESDAY JUNE 20, 1972
As Woodward’s story on Hunt runs, the players are all back in town. And, as Emery puts it, “the more structured phase of the cover-up began”. The first top Watergate meeting happens at 9am in Ehrlichman’s office, Haldeman, Mitchell, Kleindienst and Dean. Afterwards, Dean receives the contents of Hunt’s safe in the White House, which include McCord’s leftover bugs, a folder with material on Ellsberg, and other things. Most of it ends up in Dean’s safe, and is later handed to L Patrick Gray, the new head of the FBI; Gray keeps most of these documents for six months then burns them, which will cost him his job. 89 JULY 2014
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WATERGATE FACTS
Today Ehrlichman and Haldeman talk to Nixon about Watergate, though we will never know what they discuss because there are 18 and a half minutes missing from the tape of this conversation. This gap will erode Nixon’s credibility beyond repair. However, a tape survives of a meeting later that day in which Nixon asks, “You got anything more on the Mitchell operation?” This appears to suggest he knew even then everything about Watergate. Also today, the DNC files a US$1 million civil damage suit against the CRP and chairman O’Brien says the facts are “developing a clear line to the White House.” He is more right than probably even he suspected.
single follow-up question. Decades later, a tape from today between Nixon and Haldeman will be released. Haldeman says, “The great thing about it is that the whole thing is so totally f....d up, so badly done that nobody believes…” Nixon continues, “that we could have done it.” Haldeman says, “That’s right. It’s beyond comprehension.” Later that day the FBI begins interviewing high officials, starting with Colson. By now, the FBI has found that US$114,000 of cheques had passed through burglar Bernard Barker’s account: these will turn out to be Nixon campaign contribution cheques that Liddy had laundered the previous year. If these illegal donations become public and are linked to the CRP and the burglars, it will be impossible to claim Liddy was acting alone
WEDNESDAY JUNE 21, 1972
BERNARD BARKER
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN); CORBIS (BERNARD BARKER)
One of the Watergate burglars
By now the president’s men have a strategy: paint Liddy as having acted completely alone. Under this plan Liddy will confess, and the Nixon campaign will ask for compassion for “a poor misguided kid who read too many comic books,” as Haldeman puts it on the tapes. The idea is to imply guilt at a low level, far below the president. Nixon says, that day, “The main concern is to keep the White House out of it.” The problem is explaining where Liddy’s money came from. This same day, they try to get the FBI on board.
THURSDAY JUNE 22, 1972
Watergate is already slipping out of the news. There is a press conference, in which Nixon says, “The White House has had no involvement in this particular incident.” There is not a
FRIDAY JUNE 23, 1972
MAURICE STANS
Finance chairman of CRP
If there is a smoking gun in Watergate, it is the recorded conversation Haldeman and Nixon have this morning. In it, Haldeman clearly explains what has happened, and Nixon asks if the money is traceable to the CRP. He is told that it is. The discussion lasts an hour and a half. It will be more than two years before a transcript of this conversation is made public, but when it is, as Emery writes, it will “undo all Nixon’s avowals of innocence and ignorance”. By the end of the day Nixon appears to have managed to get both the CIA and the FBI on his side. He later writes in his memoirs, “As far as I was concerned, this was the end of our worries about Watergate.” McCord, released on bail, goes home and is amazed to
find all his bugging equipment in his van. He begins to get rid of it. Today, a secret hearing of testimony begins in a new criminal case: the break-in and bugging at the Watergate.
FRIDAY JUNE 30, 1972
By now things appear to have quieted down in the media, but Nixon is still talking about it. Today he is caught on tape discussing presidential pardons for the burglars. Specifically, he says, “I’ll pardon the bastards.” They also talk about hush payments for the burglars. The money was from secret campaign donations, which were plentiful. As Emery says, “It helped that the Nixon campaign coffers were so overflowing with dirty funds that there was hush money in abundance. Pay-offs would eventually reach nearly half a million dollars.” Herbert Kalmbach — Nixon’s personal lawyer and a fundraiser — calls Maurice Stans, finance chairman of the CRP, who promptly brings round a package of US$75,100 in hundred-dollar bills with no receipts. The hush money operation is underway.
SATURDAY JULY 1, 1972
Mitchell resigns from the CRP, “for family reasons”. Or as Emery concludes, “Nixon and Haldeman realised Mitchell would most likely become the target of both the investigation and the media. Mitchell was too close to Nixon for comfort.”
THURSDAY JULY 6, 1972
Another glamorous day for the star journalists. They 91 JULY 2014
spend the entire afternoon in the Library of Congress sorting through every single request for a book from the White House since July 1971, just to try to prove that Hunt got a book out about Kennedy.
FRIDAY JULY 7, 1972
Hunt, who had not been seen in weeks and had been sought by 150 FBI agents, reappears. But by now, public interest in Watergate appears to have died.
MONDAY JULY 31, 1972
By now attention has turned to the origins of US$89,000 that had gone through Barker’s bank account earlier that year through four cashier cheques, a fact that had come to light following a comment by a US district attorney general at a bond hearing. Today, Bernstein heads to Miami to chase it up. He spends most of the day being messed around trying to get hold of a local state attorney but eventually finds records of an additional cheque, for US$25,000, to the order of someone called Kenneth Dahlberg. Later, almost on deadline, Bernstein learns that Dahlberg headed the Midwestern campaign for Nixon at the previous election. Woodward finds Dahlberg in Minneapolis; Dahlberg tells him that he gave that cheque to Stans, the finance director of the CRP (Committee to Re-Elect the President). Woodward passes the story to city editor Barry Sussman right on the second edition deadline. He puts down his pen and pipe. “We’ve never had a story like this,” he says. “Just never.” 92 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
TUESDAY AUGUST 1, 1972
The Washington Post prints its crucial connection with this opening line: “A US$25,000 cashier’s check, apparently earmarked for the campaign chest of President Nixon, was deposited in April in the bank account of Bernard L Barker, one of the five men arrested in the break-in and alleged bugging attempt at Democratic National Committee headquarters here June 17.” The story, under the headline “Bug Suspect Got Campaign Funds”, is a
Watergate landmark. For the first time, a link is clear — and has now been made public — between the Watergate breakin and the CRP. Today Woodward asks that all Watergate stories carry both his and Bernstein’s names. They have started to trust one another. Their combined byline quickly comes to be known internally as Woodstein. Pretty much permanently assigned to the story, they keep a master list of several hundred names that must be called at least twice a week, and have filled four filing cabinets. “The two fought,
often openly,” their book says. “Sometimes they battled for 15 minutes over a single word or sentence.” They spend much of the month going through a list of CRP campaign officials, more than a hundred of them in all, and visiting their homes after hours in Woodward’s 1970 Karmann Ghia, finding many of them frightened and unwilling to talk.
TUESDAY AUGUST 22, 1972 On this day, Nixon is formally nominated for a second term by the Republican Party.
WATERGATE FACTS
without irony, he says, “What really hurts is if you try to cover it up.”
THE NIXON TAPES
FRIDAY SEPT 15, 1972 Hunt, Liddy and the Watergate burglars are indicted by a federal grand jury.
FRIDAY SEPT 29, 1972
Another big Washington Post splash: Mitchell, while US Attorney General, had controlled a secret fund to finance intelligencegathering operations for the Republicans against the Democrats. “Mitchell Controlled Secret GOP Fund” is the headline.
TUESDAY OCT 10, 1972
The Post reports that FBI agents have established that the Watergate break-in is part of a huge campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of Nixon and his re-election campaign. “FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats,” says the paper.
SATURDAY AUGUST 26, 1972
A report is released referring to a secret slush fund of up to US$350,000. Produced by the US General Accounting Office, the report revolved around financial irregularities in the Nixon re-election campaign.
TUESDAY AUGUST 29, 1972 At his home in San Clemente, California, Nixon addresses the issue of campaign funds, saying his staff have done nothing wrong. Apparently
SATURDAY NOV 11, 1972
The growing scandal has made absolutely no difference to Nixon’s campaign. The result had been seen as a foregone conclusion as early as August. He takes more than 60 percent of the vote — and is re-elected President of the United States.
The notorious Nixon tapes were recorded on a system installed in February 1971. Small microphones were placed in the Oval Office desk, and the fireplace in that room; the Cabinet Room; and later Nixon’s office in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, in his office telephones, in a phone in the Lincoln Sitting Room, and eventually in the Camp David retreat as well. The voice-activated recordings were produced on Sony open-reel tape recorders, which ran until Nixon ordered them turned off in July 1973. This system would go on to record about 3,500 hours of conversations (Emery reckons 5,000), some of which would prove to be very interesting indeed. Very few people knew of the taping system; it was certainly a surprise to many of the men who were incriminated by it. Only when a Senate Committee interviewed White House aide Alexander Butterfield on July 13, 1973 did its existence become public. The court subpoenaed eight tapes, initially to confirm the testimony of Dean. It would take a year and a Supreme Court fight for them to be released. When eventually they were, there was an 18 and a half minute gap in a recording on June 20, 1972 between Nixon and Haldeman. Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods claimed the blame for this, saying that when she was transcribing them, she accidentally recorded over a portion of it. She was later asked to replicate the position she was sitting in to press the wrong button, reaching far back over her left shoulder for a telephone while her foot applied pressure to a pedal controlling the transcription machine. This became known as the Rose Mary Stretch. The tapes also brought into the language the phrase “expletive deleted”, which was used to replace Nixon’s frequent swearing when the tapes were transcribed. The transcripts dramatically rocked Nixon’s public image. After a while, protestors would hold up signs outside the White House saying: “IMPEACH THE (EXPLETIVE DELETED)”. Today the tapes sit in a climate-controlled vault of the National Archives. 93 JULY 2014
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN REVISITED
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In a Discovery Channel special, key players in the real-life Watergate drama, and the movie that followed it, return to relive the trials and tragic flaws of the fall of a presidency. Luke Clark caught up with director and producer of the two-hour special, Peter Schnall An essential element to the drama of All the President’s Men Revisited is the shock of recognition. The Discovery Channel special marking the 40th anniversary of the original movie about the Watergate investigation, turns the drama up to maximum right from its first minutes — as we see iconic news anchor Walter Cronkite directing us to footage of those electric moments shortly before US President Richard Nixon’s stunning live speech to the nation, announcing that he was stepping down from his position, a landmark moment in US and world history then, and since. Then one of the orchestrators of his political demise, journalist Carl Bernstein, appears, showing the gentle signs of the decades that have passed since those highly charged days. “This was much worse than we thought,” says Bernstein. “Nixon was 94 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
worse than we thought. What happened was worse than we thought.” Another renowned news anchor Tom Brokaw is before us next, his voice as anchorman-authoritative now as ever. “He violated the law. He compromised the office. And he left a deep and wide black mark in American presidential history.” And in that first hour, as the star-studded cast of our drama emerges, it’s clear this remains more than just another historic event to these members of Washington DC elite, past and present — this is still, to this day, a defining American moment. Most remarkable perhaps, is that we meet not only the protagonists in the events — Bernstein and Washington Post partner Bob Woodward, their editor Ben Bradlee, and the Hollywood actors that played the pair, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Even more electric, when we realise
WATERGATE FACTS
DURING THE DOCUMENTARY, ROBERT REDFORD AND DUSTIN HOFFMAN — WHO STARRED AS BOB WOODWARD AND CARL BERNSTEIN — SHARE SEVERAL ANECDOTES ABOUT THE MAKING OF ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN
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it, is the fact that members of the White House staff at the time are gathered too, adding new complexity to their role in these history-writing events. We see John Dean, Nixon's White House Counsel, whose testimony will later begin the real unravelling of the Nixon presidency. And Hugh Sloan, treasurer of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP), is there too, telling the screen: “I was fine with everything up to the point I was directed to give cash to specific individuals.” And then of course, the voice of Nixon himself, caught speaking so outrageously candidly in his office by the secretly recorded White House tapes, as he delivered his opinion on how the drama would play out for him: “I think the country doesn’t give much of a [bleep] about it and most people around the country, I think, think that this is routine. Everybody’s trying to bug everybody else. It’s politics.” It was politics, but the president got it wrong. America was shocked, and remains so to this day — including those from both sides of the political spectrum. Maybe not shocked that politics was a dirty game, but just how dirty it had become. And even more, how poorly those in power were disguising the fact. The line that perfectly captures the drama is when Robert Redford says, "You didn’t see anybody shot or blown up or poisoned, but people were out to kill each other… And the weapons were telephones, typewriters, and pens." The documentary captures an extraordinary time in American history. What did working on it remind you about Watergate, and what it means, looking back? The events of Watergate were an extraordinary time 96 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
in America. It was a time where the American people witnessed government corruption on a level never seen before. It was a time where two Washington-based investigative journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were able to use the power of their medium, the written word, to uncover political corruption so devious that it would lead to the downfall and resignation of the President of the United States. Other than Watergate, do you think the media has ever played as big a direct role in US national affairs? Forty years after Watergate, the power of the press and the constant scrutiny of the American political landscape
“IT WAS AN EXTRAORDINARY TIME, A TIME WHERE THE CITIZENS WITNESSED GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE” still resonates from the reverberations of that scandal. Our two-hour Discovery Channel documentary raises the question as to whether today's jumble of print and online media will ever again be
able to investigate US national affairs in a non-partisan and thorough manner. It remains to be seen. The documentary special is given extra depth by the fact that it features many Republicans too, including those inside the White House at the time, such as John Dean, Bud Krogh and Hugh Sloan. Was it quite an exercise assembling everyone? One of the great challenges to our documentary was how to bring a 40-year-old story to life, and make it feel alive and contemporary with today's ever-changing young audience — many of whom were not around when the Watergate scandal unfolded. To do this, we invited journalists and
WATERGATE FACTS
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person is on, how similar the assessments of the actions of the Nixon White House are. It's as if there's something bigger at stake. Would you agree? In the very polarised and partisan political settings that dominate Congress and Washington, DC today, one forgets that during the time of Watergate, Democrats and Republicans alike stood together to challenge, change and call for the impeachment of one of America's most popular presidents. Our film purposely set out to speak with Republicans and Democrats from all political spectrums. Some of the more vocal critics of Nixon and his antics, were former Republican Congressmen and journalists.
ABOVE BACK IN THE DAY, HOFFMAN AND REDFORD HUNG OUT WITH THE JOURNALISTS THEY WERE TO PLAY, SO AS TO PORTRAY THEM MORE ACCURATELY TOP BERNSTEIN (LEFT) AND WOODWARD (RIGHT) AS THEY ARE TODAY, AS FEATURED IN THE SHOW
news reporters who had covered the Watergate story, as well as witnesses and voices from Nixon's inner circle, to bring the complex story to life. Weaving in scenes from Robert Redford's feature film All the President’s Men helped bring much of that history to life. But the real key to unravelling the intricate yet compelling stories behind Watergate was inviting contemporary journalists and pundits to reflect on how the events of Watergate impacted journalism, the American presidency and the global political culture today. What's interesting in the documentary, given the amount of division in politics at the time, is despite which side of the political fence the
I was impressed Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman played such prominent parts. As you reveal, Redford expressed an interest in making a film on the Post investigation very early on. Why was the project so important to them, do you think? When I was first approached by Redford to produce and direct this special project, I asked him why he wanted to revisit the events of Watergate 40 years after the scandal and almost four decades after the release of his film. He told me that he wanted the documentary "to feel like it was the first time you’re hearing this story, even though it’s one of America’s most notorious political scandals". Redford very much wanted to juxtapose the reality of those who perpetuated the crime — and those who pursued them, alongside those who portrayed them in the film. Bringing back together the cast of witnesses and players from both the events of Watergate and Redford's feature film was an important aspect of our documentary. The two investigative 97 JULY 2014
WATERGATE FACTS
TOP JOHN DEAN, NIXON'S WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL MIDDLE JOAN FELT, DAUGHTER OF FORMER FBI ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR MARK FELT. HE WAS WOODWARD'S SOURCE "DEEP THROAT" LEFT POLITICAL COMMENTATOR JAMES CARVILLE, WHO SAYS NIXON WAS A PARANOID MAN 98 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
WATERGATE FACTS
PHOTOS: DISCOVERY CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; EVERETT COLLECTION/CLICK PHOTOS (ALL THE PRESIDEN'T MEN FILM STILL AND POSTER); GETTY IMAGES (MARK FELT)
journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were juxtaposed from scenes with the two actors who would play them in the film — Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman respectively. Both the actual reporters and the actors who had portrayed them in the film were extremely excited about the idea of revisiting and discussing the events of Watergate, 40 years down the road. It was an event that had changed all their lives in one way or another. Having Redford and Hoffman sit down together to discuss the making of All the President's Men was a really thrilling scene for all of us. Their insightful and humorous stories on how they had both spent time hanging out with Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post was vital to understanding how these two great actors were able to capture these two very different personalities. Both actors also reflected on the importance and impact of Redford's film, then and now, noting how it still inspires young people to pursue a career in journalism. The fact the two journalists were, as the show notes, from different political sides and social backgrounds; do you think that helped "mesh" the team together, as Bernstein claimed? Did they fight much, to your knowledge? Woodward and Bernstein were and still are two very distinct and fascinating polar opposite characters. Spending time with both of them during the filming of our documentary was truly a honour for me. Both are still as concerned about journalism and politics as they were 40 years ago. "Woodstein", as their former editor Ben Bradlee once called them, are still out there reporting and bringing to light insightful and powerful stories from within the Washington Beltway. One of the exciting 100 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
In our documentary special we sat down with Frost, and asked him to take us through that historical interview with Nixon. Many forget that Nixon was elected president with the largest popular vote ever in the history of any president. And yet, despite that mandate, he used the power of his executive office to engage in endless campaigns of illegal activities.
scenes we filmed was when Woodward and Bernstein, along with Robert Redford and Bradlee, revisited the floor of the Washington Post newsroom where the two young reporters had broken the Watergate story. The ability to include the moving piece on Mark Felt adds a sense of completion to the project. Was that satisfying for you? One of the most interesting and moving interviews I had a chance to conduct during the filming was with Joan Felt, the daughter of former FBI agent Mark Felt — who later would be revealed to be the secret source for Woodward. Known to the world as "Deep Throat", Mark Felt never even come clean about his secret identity to his family, until his daughter Joan finally confronted him with her suspicions. For over three decades the world wondered and repeatedly guessed wrongly as to who was Woodward's secret Watergate source. And for three decades, Felt kept the secret to himself. Joan's moving and powerful tale of how her father finally opened up to her is truly an incredible story. Felt's disclosure brought a completion to one of the greatest journalistic mysteries of our time and Joan's story of her dad's final journey added a very personal ending to our tale of Deep Throat. If you could have posed one question for the show to the late Richard Nixon, what would it have been, and why? The resignation of President Nixon would not be the final moment for the disgraced president. Three years after he had resigned, Nixon would agree to sit down with British TV journalist David Frost, for an unprecedented and revealing look back at his life, presidency and the events of Watergate.
“HAVING REDFORD AND HOFFMAN SIT DOWN TO DISCUSS THE MAKING OF ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN AND GETTING DEEP THROAT’S DAUGHTER TO SPEAK WAS REALLY THRILLING”
ABOVE MARK FELT ON THE CBS PROGRAMME, FACE THE NATION IN 1976. HE UNMASKED HIMSELF AS "DEEP THROAT" IN 2005 TOP, MIDDLE ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN WON A SLEW OF ACCOLADES, INCLUDING FOUR OSCARS
We asked Frost, as we did most of the people who we interviewed — if there was one question you could ask Nixon now, what would that be? The answer to that question was almost unanimous: "Why, Mr President, did you do what you did?" It is a question I too think about, having sifted through hundreds of hours of White House tape-recorded sessions between the president and his staff, and listened to the stories of those who were on the inside and those reporting from afar — why did the president believe he had the right to abuse this executive power, to lie to the American people, to engage in corrupt illegal activities and above all, believe he could get away with it all? It is perhaps the ultimate unanswered question when looking back at the events of Watergate, 40 years ago.
WHAT'S ON THIS MONTH ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL
Naked Castaway Former British Army Captain, Ed Stafford was the first person ever to walk the length of the Amazon, but surviving completely alone on a desert island is his biggest adventure yet. Can he last 60 days on an uninhabited Fijian island with absolutely nothing? No survival tools, no rations, no film crew and no clothes! It’s a daunting challenge and nobody’s ever done it before. In fierce tropical heat he has only hours to find water before dehydration ends his attempt before it’s started. He must master the island – and his fears - to find food and water, light fire, build a proper shelter and progress from mere survival to the point where he could live there forever. AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO WEDNESDAY 11 PM STARTING 7 JULY
102 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA
WHAT'S ON
103 JULY 2014
Deadly Dilemmas It’s the play-along science series where you start each episode with nine lives and are challenged to hold onto them by answering nine fascinating Dead or Alive questions. The series will be asking viewers to ponder on seriously extreme life or death hypothetical scenarios. They simply have to decide which course of action will leave them dead or alive: if caught in a huge lightning strike would taking cover in a metal caravan save you or kill you? AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO FRIDAY 8 PM STARTING 7 JULY
A brand new series, The Mind Control Freaks exposes the inner workings of the most familiar, beguiling and interesting topic in the world: our minds. The series demonstrates how vulnerable we can all be to those who know how to manipulate us – no matter how strong-minded we believe we are. Employing a range of psychological techniques from hypnosis to peer pressure, conformity and obedience to authority – the programme experts reveal that few of us are ever completely in control. Most of us are susceptible to some form of mind control and trickery and all of us have the power to learn how to influence others – and even become control freaks ourselves. AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO FRIDAY 8 PM STARTING 21 JULY
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The Mind Control Freaks
WHAT'S ON
Alaska Gold Diggers Sara Jane and her four daughters from Southern California pool their savings and head to Alaska in an attempt to reopen their deceased Grandfather’s gold mines, one in Nome and another 500 miles away in Fairbanks. Working side by side with grizzled Alaskan mining crews, SJ and her daughters face everything Alaska has to offer. In a race against the season-ending winter, the women push to secure a return on their investment, as well as a renewal of their family legacy. AIRS EVERY MONDAY TO FRIDAY 10 PM STARTING 14 JULY
105 JULY 2014
